This part of my "careers" insight series looks at the Trust Administrator. Titles vary from Fiduciary Specialist, Relationship Manager, Trust Advisor, etc. but a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
The job nature pretty much depends on what team you end up in more so than the organisation. I guess there was a time when 1 person did everything from planning the trust, to setting it up to administering the trust to terminating the trust. Now you see roles catering to the various phases of the trust life-cycle. There are trust people who do just the front end (sales, structuring, implementation - more on them later) and those who do only the middle (after sales, administration), and those who take care of the back end (decommissioning).
The bigger and more complex the trusts, the more likely sub-specialists appear. When you have more than 10 people in your trust team, that type of specialization makes sense for efficiency and an expert knowledge base. If you have enough UK clients then you have a UK team. If you have enough charitable trusts, have a charities team. If you have enough BVI trusts, then you have a BVI team. But if your too specialised, then you may find that your career is limited to those few trust companies that have the same structure. Not everyone has use for an one-trick pony. How many trust companies need a BVI trust specialist? 20 out of 50? How many require a full time charities trust manager? 10 out of 50? Narrow minded hiring managers and clueless recruitment agencies see only the handicap and not the potential.
Perhaps the most telling of what your job as Administrator will be like is the range of permissible assets your trustee accepts. At one extreme are single asset class trusts, like a life insurance trust. If you administer a life-insurance trust then there not a whole to do until the life assured dies. In theory you monitor the value of the insurance, perhaps collect interest/dividends if any, and wait. Banks tend to sell a lot of "portfolio" trusts where all you have are the banks investments and products of course a trading account. You're likely to be knee-deep in trading and making investments and playing with time-deposits and currency swaps, buying derivatives and other structured products. A glorified banking clerk, stock broker or investment advisor. It can be so transaction oriented that there will be times you forget that you are a trustee. At the other extreme you may be administering to yachts in the French Riviera or some plantation in the Philippines. Again, there is a tendency to silo people into specialised teams. Some teams do only insurance trusts. Other do tax avoidance trusts, etc.. Your experience may be limited to what your team does and not what the rest of the trust company does. That is why knowing the internal workings of your competitors is crucial when pinching or hiring. Some people just won't fit in your organisation because they were specialised or worked in specialised teams.
Since the trust industry can encompass all areas of life, you could be sending out congratulations cards on your newborn to attending funerals. You could be hiring prime-brokers to gardeners. You could be in the middle of a billion dollar deal or settling someone's dry cleaning tab. You could be counting bottles of wine or sipping it with a Fortune 500 CEO. You could be paying tuition for some orphan or laundering money for some shady businessman. You may become an extended member of someone's family or you could be one of the thousand faces that the client has seen.
You could be flying around the world or you could be stuck in some back office desk the rest of your career. You can be someone's saviour as well as someone's sworn enemy.
If you have any rapport with clients, then you may find yourself being drawn or pushed to the front-line. You will take on more sales, marketing and relationship handling roles than administrative ones. It used to be that Trust Managers that brought in new business or additional assets was icing on the cake. Now it's pretty much a part of your performance assessment...bring in $10M new AUM or you will get fired, despite your administration prowess. Generating revenue seems to be more important then client retention these days.
At a junior staff or Officer level, you are most likely just an extra pair of hands. Your job is primarily to get data (accounting info, banking info, passports copies, etc.) and data input to generate reports or documentation, lots of documentation. Of course, with lots of documentation there is a lot of clerical filing, photocopying, scanning, and storage. You job is really not to screw up. Scan for errors, no typos, no missing documentation, cross the Ts and dot the i's, don't over book meetings, get the right flight connections, get the good hotel bookings, etc.. You may also be involved with trust accounting and the CoSec work if those functions haven't been specialised also. Regardless of your title or seniority, you are nothing until you have an opinion that someone values. Until someone asks you what you think about this or that, you are glorified clerk.
It would be a mistake to believe that you will get much structured training. Most of what you will learn will come from your team leader and operation/procedure manuals (if your trust company even has them). If they are good teachers and have a solid background then you are lucky. Most team leaders are there because of their their skill set and not the training expertise. Very very few people have formal training in learning/training. Virtually no one in the Learning/Development teams of the world's biggest companies like UBS or Citibank have a clue as to what trustees do. Consequently, any education is a trustee department's internal matter. I know of trust companies that have weekly chat/tech/sharing sessions. I know of trustees that have never had any training what-so-ever. If you're senior enough then you may the opportunity to attend external seminars. Seniority is usually the prerequisite because external functions cost money. Your local STEP branch or Trustees' Association may run sessions for a few measly bucks, but some seminars cost US$1000-3000 (excluding travel or accommodation). Still these are usually "powerpoint" shows and hardly true education. You will find that most junior staff are under-trained and have poor foundations. You will find that many senior staff have only powerpoint/buzzword knowledge. If you take your career seriously, self-education is priority because no one else really cares.
As most trust administration teams are pyramid based (few seniors supported by many juniors), your career prospect is usually just upwards or out. Companies are generally not very supportive of horizontal moves, so if your stuck in the HNWI trust team, you may not get the chance to move to the UHNWI trust team. If your were hired for your specialist skills, say like a US tax background, then expect to be used that way and your perceived value is just that. People may never see you as a "well rounded" or "multi-talented". They just see you as the pigeon-holed US tax specialist and unless it has to do with the US taxes, you are not on the top of the list for other choice assignments.
Of course, how well your relationship with your superior/manager will largely determine your fate. You can work for one of the most prestigious companies in the world but that means nothing when your immediate boss is an arse. Look closely at the job your superior/manager has. Embrace it as it where you will be in a few years time or get out.
There are very few "true" trust companies, where trust and fiduciary services are the primary service. Banks are banks first and their trust companies, just a subsidiary. Others are company incorporation or tax planning or legal services firms first, trusts are merely complementary or ancillary businesses. Therefore, even if you were to make it to be Head of Trust, you may may still have to answer to someone else. You are the captain of a boat in a flotilla. I cannot think of a single trust person that has become a CEO of a bank or Tax & Trust partner being managing partner of a major law firm. A few trust people become MDs of those company incorporation firms. So keep your aspirations in check.
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