An evolution of the fiduciary service provider
It’s a fact that the trust and fiduciary industry has become a lot more complex and more difficult and expensive to manage in the last decade. I still remember that elderly gentleman client who in 2016 complained to me truly upset that ‘in the past, everything was better’ (issue back then – phasing out of the bridge account). A bridge account was an account in the name of an offshore company owned by the fiduciary provider, through which funds from clients were routed that did not want the payment receiver to know the name of the original account. Because those accounts were usually in the name of trusts or offshore companies holding undeclared money. This was a totally normal scenario until the end of the Swiss bank secret and the kicking off of an avalanche of tax amnesties in several countries, coupled with the emerging of the automatic exchange of information and almost total transparency on who owns what.
What is happening nowadays would have this nice man most probably sobbing on the floor in desperation. Was everything better in the past? Maybe not – but it was certainly easier. Trust and fiduciary companies need to constantly evolve and reinvent themselves, otherwise they don’t stand a chance anymore against an overregulated almost hostile environment, where some of the same people that once benefited from them have declared war. Not having bridge accounts anymore is the least of worries for the modern-day trust company. To open a bank account, the fiduciary provider has to fill in a stack of paper thick as a Tolstoy novel. Compliance and reporting work take up full-time positions. Tax laws change almost daily, and the amount of AML and sanctions lists to follow as well.
So the trust company of today calls itself ‘multi family office’, and focuses on extra services for their clients – away from the ‘here is your offshore company nobody can find’ to building structures for cross-border tax planning and asset protection that still provide a benefit, and taking care of real estate, yachts, art collections and all other worries the billionaires of 2025 are facing. The evolved fiduciary services provider can still help clients to leave legacies for generations to come. Will it cost more? Yes. Will we hear the plea ‘But why?’ constantly? Also yes. But the last decade has taught us to adapt, has made us stronger and a good bit defiant, so I believe that also for 2026 this is a thriving industry and that the trust company is here to stay.