MeesPierson provides philanthropic consulting service

MeesPierson, the wealth management and trust division of Fortis Bank, recently opened its representative office in Indonesia to provide premium services here, particularly in the field of philanthropy advisory services. The Jakarta Post's Urip Hudiono recently talked with MeesPierson Indonesia president director Marc H.J. Hedeman Joosten about the company's activities and business plans in Indonesia. The following are key excerpts from the interview:

Question: What kind of services will MeesPierson provide to its clients here in Indonesia?

Answer: Our services are actually quite broad. They are built up out of seven fields of expertise, or what we call our "seven competencies", which are investment management, trust and fiduciary services, estate planning and structuring, real estate, financing, insurance and philanthropy services.

However, as it will be very difficult for us to roll out our service offering overnight in Indonesia -- as that would take a long time -- we have decided to roll it out gradually, and the first of the seven that we will offer here is the philanthropy advisory services.

And we may decide to take the second step in bringing along estate planning and structuring, which is also still an advisory and consulting service.

And then as we grow, we may decide to bring in more.

What were your considerations in expanding your business -- particularly your philanthropy advisory services -- to Indonesia?

Basically, what we have seen here in the region -- as a whole, but particularly in Indonesia -- is a strong demand for advisory services in the field of charitable and non-profit causes.

And this is a very broad field. People who are active in this field can be individuals or families who want to give something back to society, who want to give something to the universities or to hospitals, or who want to set up some kind of an educational project. Or it can also be larger non-governmental organizations (NGO) or foundations with projects here in Indonesia.

I think that it is recognized that there is a further need to professionalize the activities that they are conducting.

Could you explain more about your philanthropy advisory service?

Just to give a simple example. If a wealthy family comes to us and says they would like to do something for the region they originally came from -- like setting up a school -- then how do we go about organizing this? How do we ensure that it is sustainable and it is multi-generational, meaning that it will continue to be there three or four generations down the road?

Furthermore, the family might not only want to actually provide the infrastructure of the school itself, they or another family might want to donate a library as well, and still another family might be interested not in building -- in terms of bricks and mortar -- but in actually providing teachers.

So the idea is to try and see whether we can bring various interests by these families together to create a viable and sustainable project.

Because I am sure if you have traveled in this area and other countries, you sometimes encounter projects, where you have a beautiful hospital but it is completely empty -- there is no equipment, no doctors, no nurses -- because someone just had the idea to donate and build the hospital without making it viable.

So our people try to assist families in preparing and implementing projects, in such a way that they can actually work and that they can work for the next hundred years.

We also have organizations who come to us and say that they are getting donations in from the public, and asking how can we improve their accountability and transparency, thus ensuring that if people donate funds for a particular cause, it can be demonstrated that the funds are used properly.

Or, if clients say that they have been relatively inactive in their charity endeavors for the last couple of years, and they want to reactivate their activities, how can we help them to go about organizing the fund-raising.

What resources have you prepared in ensuring a premium level of your services? How many staff members do you have?

We have five staff members, including myself.

Our employees in the philanthropy sector are people who have been in the charity business all through their professional careers, so they are specialists in their field and they know most of the key players globally.

We also plan to have two more offices to provide our services, located where the families and institutions that have philanthropic endeavors are located.

Next year, we hope to be able to open an office in Surabaya, and in 2007 another office.

What philanthropy projects are you working on with your clients now?

We have a number of projects going on now. We have two large projects and about five smaller ones.

One of the large projects involves a very well-known international organization whose cause is to protect the environment -- the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) -- who is working toward initiating and completing a project in Indonesia. We act as their consultants on a global scale.

Another project, in education, is for one of the country's biggest foundations -- the Sampoerna Foundation. We are working with them to ensure the foundation is best in class internationally.

Besides philanthropy advisory services, you also mentioned about providing other wealth management services? Could you explain more about your estate planning and structuring service?

Estate planning is a situation whereby families have become very wealthy and have assets not only in Indonesia, but also in other locations in the world.

And when the owner of these assets passes away, the family could be faced with difficulties in coping with the succession laws of various countries where the assets are.

On the other hand, if you do have proper planning in advance, you can actually avoid such a situation.

So when we talk about estate planning we are also actually talking about succession planning.