In the world of finance, there is a fundamental distinction between selling products and building a strategy. Where conventional wealth management often resembles the upkeep of a house, wealth planning is its architect and its structural engineering office.
At Balmont Conseil, we define wealth planning as a hybrid discipline standing at the crossroads of law, taxation and finance. As an AI-Augmented Wealth Planner, my role is not to sell you an off-the-shelf solution, but to design a structure able to withstand legislative, economic and personal contingencies.
1. What is wealth planning?
Wealth planning is an intellectual and technical approach aimed at organising the assets of a person (individual or company) to meet precise objectives: protection, growth or transfer.
Unlike a simple product-led approach (opening a securities account or an assurance-vie, a French life-insurance savings wrapper), wealth planning starts from a comprehensive wealth review. It draws on complex legal and tax levers to create a bespoke environment. It is a discipline that looks not only at how much you earn, but at how your wealth is legally “held” (matrimonial property regimes, company structures, contractual clauses).
The three pillars of the discipline
- Law: Drawing on family law, company law and civil law to secure the way assets are held.
- Taxation: Optimising the tax burden (personal income tax, IFI real-estate wealth tax, transfer duties) without ever crossing into abus de droit (abuse of law).
- Finance: Selecting the investment strategies and financial assets most consistent with the chosen legal structure.
2. Who needs wealth planning, and in which cases?
While wealth planning has historically been associated with high-net-worth clients, it is today indispensable for anyone whose situation carries a certain degree of complexity.
- The Business Owner: This is the archetypal profile. Here the challenge is the porosity between professional wealth and private wealth. How can you protect your family from business risks? How can you prepare a sale through a holding patrimoniale (family holding company) or a contribution-and-sale arrangement (apport-cession, art. 150-0 B ter)?
- The Executive or Independent Professional: Subject to a heavy tax burden, these profiles seek asset-protection and long-term tax-optimisation solutions.
- Internationally Mobile Families: In an expatriation context, wealth planning becomes vital to navigate between international tax treaties and the inheritance law of different countries.
- Blended Families: Where French civil law can prove rigid, wealth planning makes it possible to organise a fair and deliberate wealth transfer.
3. The services and solutions of wealth planning
The wealth planner works through a rigorous methodology that we divide into several stages at Balmont Conseil.
The Wealth Audit: The “Stress Test”
Everything begins with a quantitative and qualitative analysis of your situation. We scrutinise your real-estate, financial and professional assets, but also your civil-law commitments. This comprehensive wealth audit reveals “dormant” risks: insufficient protection for the surviving spouse, a latent tax charge that would weigh too heavily on death, or a holding structure ill-suited to your plans.
Wealth Modelling
Using our AI tools, we carry out wealth modelling. We simulate how your standard of living and your tax burden evolve over 20 years under various scenarios (sale of the business, moving abroad, large-scale investments). This data-driven approach enables a fact-based decision rather than one guided by intuition.
Legal and Tax Structures
Wealth planning offers concrete tools to structure your assets:
- Property-Holding Civil Company (SCI, SCP): To organise the management of real estate and ease its transfer.
- Démembrement (split of ownership): Separating the usufruct from the bare ownership to optimise the IFI or to prepare a lifetime gift at lower cost.
- Assurance-vie and Beneficiary Clause: Bespoke drafting of the clauses to use this lever as a genuine estate-planning tool.
- Pacte Dutreil (family-business transfer relief): For business owners, to reduce the taxable base on a business transfer by 75%.
4. The skills and profile of the wealth planner
The wealth planner is often described as the “general practitioner of wealth” or the “conductor of the orchestra”. To practise, they must possess sharply honed skills:
- Legal Expertise: Full command of tax law, inheritance law and matrimonial property regimes.
- Financial Analysis: Understanding the markets in order to validate the economic soundness of the structures.
- A Talent for Synthesis: The ability to coordinate the other advisers ( notaries, lawyers, chartered accountants ). The wealth planner does not replace the notary; they prepare the notary’s work upstream with a comprehensive view.
- Regulatory Monitoring: In an environment where the laws change every year (the annual Loi de Finances, France’s Finance Act), the ability to adapt is crucial.
What qualifications lead to this profession?
The profession is generally entered after a specialised Master’s degree (a Master’s in wealth management, tax law or wealth planning). Many experts also hold law degrees or business-school qualifications, rounded out with professional certifications (such as ANACOFI accreditation for wealth advisory).
5. Addressing specific challenges: concrete examples
Intergenerational Transfer
A client wishes to transfer a rental building in Lyon to their two children while keeping the income for their retirement.
Wealth-planning solution: setting up a property-holding civil company, followed by a gift of the bare ownership of the shares with a reserved usufruct.
- Outcome: The client retains control and the income. On death, the children recover full ownership with no additional inheritance tax on the value of the usufruct.
Optimising Inheritance Tax
Through a mandat posthume (post-death administration mandate) or cross démembrements, wealth planning makes it possible to reduce the taxable base lawfully. We work on optimising inheritance tax to turn a burden that is merely endured into a seamless intergenerational strategy.
FAQ: Wealth Planning in questions
Q1: What is the difference between a CGP and a Wealth Planner?
The Wealth Management Adviser (CGP) takes a client-facing approach centred on overall guidance. The Wealth Planner focuses on the legal and tax technicality of the structure. At Balmont Conseil, we bring the two together through the concept of the augmented adviser.
Q2: When should you call on wealth planning?
As soon as a major event is on the horizon: marriage, birth, starting a business, a significant property investment, expatriation or planning for retirement. The earlier you anticipate, the more effective the levers.
Q3: Is it reserved for the very wealthy?
No. While complexity increases with the volume of assets, questions of protecting the surviving spouse or of organising the transfer of property concern a large share of the population. Wealth planning brings the legal certainty that any hard-earned estate deserves.
Q4: How is AI transforming this profession?
AI enables instant regulatory monitoring and a modelling capacity far beyond human reach. It frees the wealth planner from tedious calculations so they can concentrate on listening and on tailoring their advice.
Conclusion: Your wealth deserves engineering of the highest order
Wealth is not static data; it is a living organism that evolves with you. Wealth planning is what guarantees its longevity. By choosing a wealth strategy built on solid legal and tax foundations, you do more than invest: you build a legacy.
At Balmont Conseil, we combine the mathematical rigour of AI with the finesse of human advice to become the guardians of your financial architecture.
Ready for a comprehensive wealth audit?
Contact our experts for a personalised analysis of your situation.
Sources & References:
- Code Général des Impôts (CGI) — French tax code: wealth-transfer provisions and property taxation.
- Loi de Finances 2026 — new provisions on wealth management.
- ANACOFI Members’ Handbook — ethical standards for wealth advisory.
- Conseil d’État case law on legal structures and abuse of law.