Scott S. Sumner doesn’t apologize for his enthusiasm about custody services. As Vice President and Head of Custody at Fiduciary Trust Company, he knows it’s not the most glamorous corner of financial services—but to Sumner, it’s where everything starts.
“Custody, at the end of the day, is the foundation of financial services,” Sumner explains. Every investor needs a secure place for their assets, but safety and security are only the beginning. Beyond these basics, he says, the question becomes how a custody provider can add value—not just for investors but for the advisors who serve them.
For advisory firms navigating an increasingly complex client landscape, the answer to Sumner’s question carries significant implications. Fiduciary Trust, with its 140-year history and over $34 billion in assets under supervision, represents a different approach to custody—one built specifically for the complexities of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families.
When Brokerage Custody Isn’t Enough
Custody providers have long been divided into two camps: brokerage custodians and bank custodians. For advisors managing straightforward investment accounts, brokerage custody typically gets the job done—offering safekeeping, transactions, and reporting. But as client relationships grow more complex, the limits of brokerage platforms quickly emerge.
Take trust accounting, for example. Managing irrevocable trusts requires precise segregation of principal and income—a legal, not optional, responsibility, Sumner points out. Bank custodians like Fiduciary Trust Company, which hold trust company powers, have that functionality built into their systems. Otherwise, trustees can end up juggling spreadsheets and calculations by hand.
“That’s something that becomes a manual responsibility of a trustee if you’re working with a custodian that can’t handle that accounting,” he notes. But with a trust partner custodian, quarterly income distributions to beneficiaries become straightforward system functions rather than potentially error-prone manual exercises.
The consequences run deeper than inconvenience. Trustees who mishandle principal and income accounting don’t just create paperwork headaches—they expose themselves to personal liability. “You won’t get it done by trying. You absolutely have to get it right on behalf of the trust and on behalf of the beneficiaries,” Sumner emphasizes. “So, all the more critical to partner with a custody provider that can handle that level of accounting.”
The Power of Proximity
What sets Fiduciary Trust apart, however, goes beyond its systems. The firm has made deliberate decisions about how it delivers custody services, starting with a rejection of the industry’s offshore operations trend.
While many financial firms have turned custody into a global assembly line, Fiduciary Trust keeps all its operations teams co-located with client service professionals in Boston. Sumner can walk across the office to talk with anyone who touches a client account—no time zone differences, no ticket queues.
“It’s not a call center; it’s not a technology-forward sort of self-service platform,” he says. “It’s real, seasoned client service professionals that are working with our clients on a day-in, day-out basis.”
Physical proximity translates directly into speed and accuracy. When issues arise, the right people can get in a room and solve them quickly—five minutes if that’s all it takes, five hours if complexity demands more time. “They get things done for our clients very nimbly, very efficiently,” Sumner explains, without “dealing with time zones and all sorts of other bureaucratic barriers” that can grind processes to a halt.
Understanding the Triangular Relationship
Custody operates within a triangular structure: the client engages both an advisor and a custodian through separate relationships. But from the client’s perspective, it’s seamless—they see the custodian as part of the advisor’s service model.
When custody operations slow or stall, clients don’t distinguish between advisor and custodian failures. The custodian “can only drag down the process and potentially be a bad reflection upon that advisor firm,” Sumner observes, “when things that should be happening very quickly and efficiently for clients seem to not happen very efficiently and easily for a client.”
High-net-worth clients often expect immediate action. Sumner offers a familiar scenario: a client calls late Thursday, panicked that they forgot to pay their child’s tuition. The bursar needs funds today or the student is unenrolled.
“That phone call is going to go to the advisor, and then the advisor is going to turn around and work with their custodian, ultimately, to get that done,” he notes. Large institutional platforms built for next-day service can’t handle the immediacy. “A lot of these larger institutions, now that they’re built for this institutional platform, the wire will happen today, but it’s not going to happen in the next 10 minutes.”
When escalation isn’t possible in urgent situations, clients and advisors both pay the price.
“There’s no ability to sort of escalate and elevate certain situations that are extremely important to those clients and potentially can have ramifications if they’re not done quickly and efficiently,” adds Sumner.
Fiduciary Trust Company’s operational structure enables rapid response. “At the end of the day, if you have to get the right people in a room to solve something for a client, we’re able to do that,” he says. The result: advisors can deliver on urgent requests and maintain their clients’ confidence.
Beyond Traditional Assets
As advisors expand their work with wealthier clients, asset complexity often follows. High-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth families typically hold more than traditional stocks and bonds. Their portfolios might include real estate, artwork, limited partnerships, LLCs, hedge funds—the full spectrum of alternative assets.
Fiduciary Trust’s roots as a trust company, founded in 1885 and incorporated as a trust bank in 1928, inform its ability to handle that diversity. Trusts can own anything, and the firm’s systems accommodate comprehensive reporting across asset types.
“You need to be able to have a platform that can solve for all that,” Sumner believes.
Brokerage custodians often struggle with alternative asset accounting, pushing trustees into outdated reporting processes. “You’re getting back into that manual realm if the custodian that you’ve chosen is unable to report on certain portions of what that trust owns,” says Sumner, “and it becomes certainly very difficult to handle.”
Comprehensive custody reporting helps advisors and clients see the full picture. For directed trustee relationships, it also gives advisors flexibility to design portfolios without worrying about whether the custodian can support each asset type.
Building for Growth
Most advisory firms today work with multiple custodians—often two to four—and make strategic decisions about where each client belongs. Even so, Sumner encourages advisors to think long term and strategically about custodial relationships, particularly as firms aim to serve wealthier, more complex clients. “It’s good to have a custodian that you’re not going to outgrow,” he says.
As firms climb upmarket, they need partners capable of handling their changing client requests. “It’s imperative to have at least one of your custodial relationships be one of those relationships that can handle the unique and complex stuff as it arises,” Sumner emphasizes. “What you don’t want to have happen is be successful with that new $100 million to $200 million family and then start peeling the onion and realizing that your current custodial providers aren’t going to be able to handle that.”
The challenge encompasses more than assets under management. Domicile matters—non-U.S. individuals can be difficult to custody at traditional brokerage platforms. Alternative assets held in IRAs create additional complexity. Advisors need custody partners who can handle the full range of scenarios wealthy families present.
Becoming the First Call
Every advisor wants to be the first call their client makes when something important happens. But as Sumner points out, “It’s also sort of the double edge of that sword. What if you are the first call?”
Clients might call about investments, but they might also need trust services, philanthropic planning through donor-advised funds, or tax preparation—requests that an advisor may not readily be able to handle on the fly. Working with a custody provider that offers comprehensive capabilities means having resources available when client conversations expand beyond investment management.
“Partnering with a custodian potentially can help that firm round out all those types of services and have access to those services,” Sumner explains, “so when you’re that first call, you have the ability to know what to say and bring additional resources to bear.”
Fiduciary Trust Company’s suite includes trust administration (with access to New Hampshire’s favorable trust laws), donor-advised fund programs, tax services, and lending capabilities. The result is a comprehensive platform that helps advisors deepen relationships and expand the value they deliver.
The Advisor-Centric Model
Fiduciary Trust’s approach centers on advisor relationships. The firm partners with more than 100 financial advisors, along with law firms, family offices, and multifamily offices, maintaining clear boundaries around relationship management.
Advisors manage client relationships and assets while Fiduciary Trust provides custody, trust services, and related capabilities. The model preserves advisor primacy with clients while adding depth to service delivery. With direct relationships between advisors and experienced Fiduciary Trust professionals, responsiveness and flexibility remain high.
Operating as a private firm with over $34 billion in assets under supervision positions Fiduciary Trust in a sweet spot—small enough to be nimble, large enough to have substantial resources. The firm’s flexible operating model handles both complex and traditional assets, with services that can be unbundled to meet specific client needs.
Rethinking Custody’s Role
Sumner’s enthusiasm for custody comes from understanding its strategic importance. Custody isn’t just administrative—it’s the infrastructure that makes everything else in wealth management possible. When custody runs smoothly, advisors can focus on what matters most: relationships, portfolios, and planning. When it doesn’t, things slow down, and every aspect of client service suffers.
For advisors serving clients with complex needs—or aspiring to—custody deserves as much strategic consideration as investment management or financial planning. Price, platform familiarity, and convenience matter, but so do flexibility, service integration, and the ability to adapt as clients’ needs evolve.
With more than a century of fiduciary heritage, Fiduciary Trust demonstrates how custody, done right, can become a true differentiator. It’s a model built not for scale alone but for precision, partnership, and people—where experienced professionals still believe that behind every account is a family whose needs can’t wait until tomorrow.
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