Cogent Bank launches trust unit as Florida wealth surges

Cogent Bank, a $2.45 billion-asset Orlando lender, has launched a trust division and hired Madelayne Cordero, former chief fiduciary officer at Coral Gables, Florida's $10.3 billion-asset Amerant Bank, as managing director at a moment when community banks elsewhere are leaving the business. WAD records show Cogent with 418 advisory accounts and $606 million in regulated AUM as of Aug. 22, a small start even as Florida's high-net-worth market expands.

The industry's recent moves run the other way. In January, Signature Bank of Rosemont, Illinois, entered trust by partnering with Overland Park, Kansas-based Midwest Trust rather than building in-house, while Watford City, North Dakota's $6.2 billion-asset First International Bank & Trust sold its trust operations outright. Cordero, who says she understands the cost pressures, told American Banker that "trust is not cheap" and "comes with a hefty price tag," even if it contributes to overall income; fees, she notes, are typically discounted because clients rarely hold a trust relationship alone.

The Florida bet rests on the flow of wealth. A Florida Chamber Foundation report released this month put in-migration at roughly 550 people per day in 2025, and Henley & Partners' recent report counted Miami and West Palm Beach among the nation's fastest-growing wealth hubs, their millionaire populations doubling from 2014 to 2024 while Florida's statewide tally approached 1.2 million millionaires. "We've had an incredible migration of wealth into Florida," Cordero said. "That wealth is here, it's not going anywhere... We need to service it."

The more durable factor may be stickiness: naming a bank as trustee is a deliberate act, and clients do not move that relationship the way they move a checking account. For an institution building out HNW services, that makes trust a retention tool rather than a fee engine. Outsourcing keeps compliance costs down, but it hands the client relationship to a third party and cedes the estate-planning seat.

Cogent's bet is that in Florida's wealth boom, the trust unit pays for itself before it ever collects a fee. For a bank whose growth depends on sticky high-net-worth relationships, that seat is worth more than the fee schedule.