Sterling Trustees Named #1 for Best Advisor Service in the 2026 Wealth Advisor Trust Survey

We are pleased to share that Sterling Trustees has been recognized as the top-ranked trust company for Best Advisor Service in the 2026 Wealth Advisor Advisor-Friendly Trust Companies survey — an independent annual ranking drawn from responses by more than 350,000 wealth advisors across the country.

This recognition is meaningful to us not because of the ranking itself, but because of what it measures. Advisor service is not a marketing category. It is the daily reality of how we work — how quickly we respond, how clearly we communicate, and how consistently we execute on the responsibilities that advisors and their clients have entrusted to us.

What Advisor Service Means at Sterling

Sterling Trustees was built around a fundamental premise: that advisors should not have to fight for their clients’ attention, chase down status updates, or work around a trustee that operates at the pace of a large institution. We designed our model specifically to prevent that.

Trust officer caseloads at Sterling are capped at 75 to 100 trusts — a fraction of the 200 to 500 carried by many directed-only competitors. That ratio is not incidental. It is a deliberate structural choice that determines how much time each trust officer can devote to a given advisor relationship, how quickly a call gets returned, and how thoughtfully a distribution request or trust question is handled.

Our technology infrastructure supports that commitment. SterlingConnect℠, our proprietary client-facing portal, gives advisors real-time visibility into trust activity, distributions, and holdings across all custodians — without requiring a phone call or a waiting period. WealthHub, the Salesforce-based platform that powers our back office, automates the administrative workflows that would otherwise consume trust officer time, freeing them to focus on the relationships that matter.

We are also custodian agnostic. Advisors keep their clients’ assets at Fidelity, Schwab, Pershing, or any other custodian of their choosing. We never require re-custodying, and we never compete with the advisor for the client relationship. Under a directed trust structure, the advisor retains full investment discretion and AUM. Our role is to support that relationship, not to insert ourselves into it.

A Note of Gratitude

“This recognition reflects the work of our entire team. Our trust officers bring genuine care and professionalism to every advisor relationship, and it shows in the work they do every day. We are grateful to the advisors who shared their experiences and to Wealth Advisor for recognizing what advisor service can look like when it is done right.”

— Antony Joffe, Chairman, Sterling Trustees

We extend our sincere thanks to the advisors who participated in the survey and to the team at Wealth Advisor for conducting an independent, peer-driven evaluation of the trust industry.

Learn More

 • Explore how Sterling Trustees works alongside advisors, attorneys, and families

 • View the full 2026 Wealth Advisor Advisor-Friendly Trust Companies ranking

 • Schedule a 30-minute call with our team