In an industry where client retention is often the goal and growth can feel elusive, Members Trust Company (MTC) is flipping the script. The firm isn’t just another trust provider—it’s a strategic ally for financial advisors determined to deepen client relationships, retain assets across generations, and grow their book of business. Founded by a group of credit unions to serve their members, MTC is uniquely structured to prioritize people over profits, blending accessibility with deep financial sophistication.
For Jason P. Liu, Chief Growth Officer at Members Trust, the mission is clear: “Every day, we get a challenge. Every day is an opportunity, and it’s up to us to see whether we excel and succeed or not.” In an interview with The Wealth Advisor’s Scott Martin, Liu discussed how trust services are meant to do more than protect legacies—they also can unlock growth for advisors and deliver value clients didn’t know was possible.
A Client-Centric Approach That Expands Advisor Capabilities
MTC empowers advisors to support a far broader spectrum of clients than traditional trust companies allow. Originally built by credit unions to serve their members, the company’s DNA is rooted in accessibility, transparency, and service. “We started out serving credit union clients and the credit unions themselves,” Liu explains. “We serve everyone from mass affluent to core affluent, high-net-worth, and ultra-high-net-worth.”
Members Trust’s ability to handle clients across the wealth spectrum gives advisors significantly more flexibility and an edge—particularly with clients whom larger institutions might ignore. While other firms might draw lines around who they will serve, MTC offers advisors a broader playing field. “A lot of those clients get overlooked out there, and a lot of other firms ignore them. We don’t—we welcome them,” Liu emphasizes.
Serving a comprehensive clientele enables advisors to position trust services as a value proposition for more relationships, ultimately expanding revenue opportunities.
Complexity as a Specialty Not a Barrier
For many advisors, the more their clients succeed, the more complicated their situations become. That’s where MTC truly stands out. From special needs trusts to timberland, real estate, or closely held businesses, MTC is equipped to manage the nuanced needs of affluent and ultra-high-net-worth families. “Advisors, as they get more into the high-net-worth space, find more complexity, more unique assets, more family-owned businesses,” Liu says. “So, they have different problems, and we better have different answers and different solutions.”
The technical expertise at MTC extends beyond theoretical knowledge—it’s built into the company’s operations. MTC’s credentialed staff includes JDs, LLMs, CFPs, CFAs, and CTFAs, providing a deep bench of applied knowledge. “Our credentialization and the talent of the team here are exceptionally high,” Liu notes. For advisors, that means when the edge cases come up—the family dynamics, the niche assets, the unusual requests—they’re not alone.
More important, MTC can help advisors retain control in those more intricate situations. As Liu explains, “We can allow you to remain the advisor in the entire situation, maintain that you’re the primary relationship manager with everything. We are not replacing you.”
In one case, an advisor on the verge of losing a client with a multimillion-dollar trust was able to keep and consolidate the relationship through MTC. “They go from $800,000 to tens of millions overnight,” Liu recalls. “The client is like, ‘I wish you guys would’ve told me about this sooner. I wouldn’t have had to go out and talk to somebody else about this.’”
Business Development That’s Personal and Practical
Members Trust delivers support through hands-on engagement, not just theoretical guidance. The company employs a dedicated business development team, many of whom have advisor backgrounds themselves—professionals who appreciate firsthand what it means to grow a practice. “They understand the challenges that the advisors face every single day,” Liu says. “And when they meet with advisors, their goal is to help the advisor grow their book of business.”
The business development team meets with advisors regularly, not just to talk about trust services but to coach, co-plan, and collaborate on how to use trust services as a true differentiator. “They work with them hand in hand every single day focusing on how are you going to grow your AUM? How are you going to grow your recurring fee-based revenue, offer something different, be something different, have different solutions for them,” Liu says.
That boots-on-the-ground support is meant to give advisors an advantage. They can bring MTC into client meetings, leveraging deep technical knowledge while still maintaining the lead relationship. “We want to shine the light on you as the advisor, put you in the best possible light in the client’s eyes so that you look like the hero at the end of the day,” Liu explains.
Evolving Beyond Products to Process
Liu doesn’t see trust services as a product to pitch. He sees them as a process to incorporate—a process that can advance an advisor’s entire practice. “I’ll ask the advisor, how are you evolving? Are you a dinosaur, or are you evolving?” he says. “Go back in the day, and it was commissions, then it became converting to fee-based. Then it was integrating financial services. So, what’s the next step? It is not going to be a product; it’s going to be a process.”
That process starts with education. MTC University offers training, webinars, and practice management coaching to help advisors rethink, for example, how they work with multigenerational families. It’s not about adding more hours to the day—it’s about working smarter, scaling effectively, and using trust services as a platform for long-term growth.
For advisors struggling to break out of a plateau, trust services represent more than a back-office necessity; they can be a front-line growth opportunity to transform their practice and elevate client relationships.
The Mission: Make Advisors Indispensable
At the heart of MTC’s message is one unshakable belief: trust services should make the advisor indispensable not replaceable. That’s why everything at MTC is designed around partnership. “Without advisors, without clients, there is no firm,” Liu says. “When I look at our firm, I’ll say our firm is a collection of people. People are the firm. At the end of the day, we’re only as strong as our people are.”
From credentialed specialists who can join client meetings to a team that understands the day-to-day demands of an advisory business, MTC exists to support, not supplant. Its client-first philosophy, ownership by credit union stakeholders, and commitment to advisor enablement all reinforce one foundational idea: Members Trust is a firm built on Main Street values with Wall Street expertise.
That shared purpose fuels a culture of pride and passion within MTC. “We like what we do,” Liu says. “First of all, we have fun getting to do what we do every single day. It’s amazing. If you love what you do, you never have to go to work. You get to go to work.”
For advisors who want to evolve their practice, retain valuable relationships, and build something lasting, Members Trust goes beyond being a service provider to becoming a strategic partner that makes trust services a core part of the advisor’s value proposition.
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