Intangible Assets in Family Businesses: The Assets You’ll Never Insure (But Should Still Protect)
- Future Accounting
- Jan 9
- 4 min read
Written by: Chris Mulcahy
Why intangible assets in family businesses matter more than ever
When most business owners hear the word asset, their mind immediately goes to the obvious: property, plant and equipment, vehicles, inventory, and perhaps goodwill.
These assets are important. They are familiar, visible, and easy to list on a balance sheet — and easy to insure.
But in today’s digital and relationship-driven economy, they are rarely where the real value of a family business sits.
Increasingly, the most valuable assets are the ones you can’t insure, can’t touch, and can’t easily list, yet they are often the assets that matter most when things change.
The Shift from Tangible to Intangible Value
Twenty or thirty years ago, competitive advantage was built on physical scale:
more land, bigger factories, better machinery.
Today, advantage is built on things like:
Trust
Data
Systems
Reputation
Knowledge
Relationships
Intellectual property
Digital presence
These assets don’t always appear clearly in financial reports, yet they often explain why one business outperforms another with similar turnover and physical assets.
They also explain why buyers are willing to pay premiums for certain businesses — and why some family businesses struggle to transition, sell, or survive generational change.
The Intangible Assets Hiding in Plain Sight
Most family businesses already have significant intangible assets — they just don’t recognise them as such.
Examples include:
Client and customer relationships
Not just a list of names, but depth of trust, longevity, and dependency on the business rather than a single individual.
Brand and reputation
What people say about your business when you’re not in the room, especially online.
Data and insights
Customer data, pricing knowledge, operational data, and historical insights that competitors don’t have.
Systems and processes
Documented workflows, decision frameworks, and operating rhythms that allow the business to run consistently.
Digital assets
Websites, domains, social platforms, mailing lists, content libraries, and automation tools.
Intellectual property
Methodologies, training materials, proprietary models, formulas, or internally developed tools.
People capability and culture
Skills, leadership depth, and a culture that attracts and retains the right people.
None of these assets exist independently. They compound. And over time, they often become far more valuable than the physical assets that started the business.
Why These Assets Matter to Family Business Owners
These assets matter because they are:
Rarely insured, yet often irreplaceable
Built slowly, but lost quickly
Critical to value, but easy to overlook
Highly dependent on people, unless intentionally managed
When these assets are ignored, risk quietly increases even if the financial results look strong.
Seeing These Assets Through the Three P’s
At Future Accounting, we view assets through the lens of Preserve, Protect and Prosper.
Preserve – recognising what has been built over decades and ensuring it doesn’t quietly disappear as people, technology or generations change.
Protect – reducing avoidable risk by ensuring key knowledge, systems, relationships and digital assets are owned, documented and governed.
Prosper – intentionally developing the assets that support future growth, adaptability and long-term wealth.
The assets you’ll never insure sit at the centre of all three.
They are often the assets that preserve family wealth, protect the business from over-reliance on individuals, and create the foundation for future prosperity.
Control Is the Key Difference
One of the most powerful aspects of intangible assets is that, unlike markets or insurance premiums, they sit largely within the control of the business owner.
You can:
Decide who owns the intellectual property
Decide how systems and processes are documented
Decide whether customer relationships sit with individuals or the business
Decide how digital assets are governed
Decide how knowledge is transferred to the next generation
Ignoring these decisions doesn’t mean they don’t get made, it just means they happen by default, often with unintended consequences.
The First Step: Seeing the Full Asset Picture
Before you can protect or grow these assets, you need to recognise them.
That is the starting point of the conversation:
Expanding the definition of what an asset really is
Understanding what truly drives value in your business
Identifying which assets are fragile, concentrated or undocumented
Clarifying which assets are personal and which belong to the business
For family businesses thinking about succession, growth or long-term preservation of wealth, this broader view of assets is no longer optional.
The future value of the business will be determined less by what can be insured — and more by the assets you’ve intentionally built behind the scenes.
When Something Feels “Off” in the Business
When something isn’t working in a business, the instinct is often to look at the numbers: revenue, margins, costs, or cash flow.
But in many family businesses, the issue isn’t financial, it’s an asset deficiency.
Examples include:
Strong demand but inconsistent delivery
Good people but constant reliance on key individuals
Loyal clients but fragile relationships
Solid profits but high stress and burnout
Growth opportunities that can’t be taken up
These symptoms often point to missing or underdeveloped assets:
undocumented systems
unclear ownership of relationships or IP
weak data or decision frameworks
limited leadership depth
In other words, when something feels wrong, the question is often not “What’s wrong with the business?” but “Which asset hasn’t been built, protected or transferred yet?”
This conversation will form part of your annual review meeting
As part of our annual review process, we will step back from the numbers and look more broadly at the assets that sit behind your business, including those that don’t appear on the balance sheet. This helps ensure what you are building is being preserved, protected and positioned to prosper.
Disclaimer
This article does not constitute financial advice and is for general information only. It does not take into account any individual’s personal objectives, situation or needs, and is not intended as professional advice. Any similarity to an individual’s personal circumstances and the examples provided in this article is purely coincidental. Any person acting upon such information without receiving specific advice, does so entirely at their own risk.
Authorisation under an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) is not required in the provision of this article and the author plus Future Accounting Group Pty Ltd is not acting in its capacity as an Australian Financial Services Licence holder
Liability limited by a scheme approved under professional standards legislation.
