Cresset-NAT combination would create a $13.1 billion trust platform for advisors

Cresset is pursuing a combination with National Advisors Trust that would fold its $5.4 billion trust and services division into NAT's $7.7 billion platform, creating a $13.1 billion trust business serving both Cresset's clients and the independent advisors NAT works with today. Cresset, the New York multi-family office overseeing more than $250 billion in client assets, framed the move as "pursuing" a combination rather than announcing a completed acquisition; a spokesperson said the firm expects to transition its existing trust business onto NAT's platform over time rather than maintaining two separate platforms with their own state charters. WealthManagement.com first reported the plan.

For advisors deciding how to deliver trust services inside client estate plans, the announcement widens the middle path between building and buying. NAT, founded in 2001 and based in Leawood, Kan., brings a national trust charter and Brand Advantage, a white-label program through which advisors offer trust services under their own branding; the company says it partners with more than 340 wealth firms, 13,000 advisors and 17,000 families in the United States.

The alternative routes are on display in the same market: Alvarez & Marsal Private Wealth Partners, the RIA launched by consulting parent A&M Inc., created its own national trust company earlier this year, and F.L.Putnam Investment Management acquired New Hampshire-chartered Darwin Trust Company in 2024. Cresset's recent growth has come from buying wealth practices instead, including the $4 billion UBS team in Boca Raton this publication covered in August.

Trust work tends to bite hardest where clients cross state lines: as this publication has argued, state estate-tax exemptions begin well below the federal threshold, and the domicile test that decides them rewards advisors who document intent while the client is still moving. Cresset CEO Susie Cranston described the deal as "an expansion of national trust services for the independent RIA and family office sector, which has very much been needed."

If completed, Cresset would become a client of NAT while investing in the firm to keep the platform growing through external advisor clients and acquisitions. A buyer that becomes a customer of the business it is buying has concluded, in effect, that renting national trust capability beats running it. NAT's roster of more than 340 partner firms suggests the same: a wide segment of advisors has no appetite for standing up a charter of its own, and the combined platform's pitch is that it can serve them at greater scale.

Cresset expects to move its trust business over time, so the $13.1 billion total describes a platform still to be assembled; the one Cresset's clients sit on today is NAT's $7.7 billion.