When Terry Doyle talks about being advisor friendly, he isn’t reciting marketing copy. The Vice President and Director of Fiduciary Sales at Prairie Trust has spent the past 11 years proving the concept works—and seeing the firm expand its assets under administration from $350 million to more than $1.5 billion by building trust office by office with wealth managers across the country.
“We’ve grown quite a bit and look forward to doing more of the same,” Doyle says.
That growth reflects a fundamental shift in how some trust companies engage with financial advisors. Instead of viewing advisors as temporary handoff points before taking over client relationships, Prairie Trust has structured its model around supporting the advisor while managing the complex fiduciary work behind the scenes.
“The first thing they want to make sure is that nobody’s going to make them look bad if they’re referring somebody to an outside party to perform some sort of a service,” Doyle explains. “So, it’s not just our goal to not look bad but to help them look good.”
The Quarterback Stays in the Game
Prairie Trust operates on a simple principle: the advisor remains the primary relationship owner. Doyle acknowledges the phrase “advisor friendly” is often repeated in the industry, but at Prairie Trust, he means it literally.
“We’re very attentive to listening to what the advisor tells us, not just about the relationship but what they expect from us,” he says.
In practice, the division of responsibilities stays clear. Prairie Trust handles distributions according to trust terms, while advisors continue managing investment portfolios and serving as the client’s main point of contact. The firm doesn’t push advisors aside or attempt to reorganize existing client relationships.
“As trustee, we take care of the distribution decisions, so we follow the terms of the trust. We get to know the client on the front end,” Doyle explains. “I think that’s another part of being advisor friendly, getting to understand what the client’s needs are and how the client ticks.”
When complications arise, Prairie Trust loops in the advisor rather than handling issues unilaterally. “We like to be open with the advisor and to just tell them,” he says. “And very often, the advisor, because they’ve had the relationship, can help us as the trustee get through it with hopefully the smallest amount of conflict and wailing and gnashing of teeth as possible.”
Flexibility in Custody Arrangements
One of Prairie Trust’s most notable departures from traditional models is evident in custody arrangements. Many institutional trustees require assets to move to a preferred custodian, often requiring advisors to change platforms and workflows. Prairie Trust takes the opposite approach.
“An advisor can, in almost every case, keep all the assets with their custodian of choice,” Doyle explains. “We don’t force them to move them to a particular custodian, so they’re continuing to use the same trading platform.”
The firm sets up electronic links to view accounts and establishes ACH portals for moving funds as needed. Advisors can bill fees the same way, execute trades on familiar platforms, and maintain their standard service model while Prairie Trust handles the fiduciary oversight.
Responsive Service Over Assembly-Line Processing
Doyle contrasts Prairie Trust’s approach with what he’s seen at larger institutions: trust relationships being conformed to standardized boxes regardless of how the arrangement serves the client.
“A lot of those trust companies have become, in some ways, like the large bank trust companies where it went away from personal service to almost like a manufacturing plant where everything had to be a certain size,” he says. “It had to be cut to a certain specification, and if it didn’t fit into those criteria, they either didn’t want it or they kind of pushed it off to the side and just didn’t provide great service.”
On the contrary, Doyle emphasizes, “really great service in the trust business is being responsive.”
Responsiveness means returning calls promptly, answering emails quickly, and communicating through whichever channel the beneficiary prefers. The answer won’t always be yes, he notes, but beneficiaries and advisors deserve timely responses that explain either why a request can’t be accommodated or what additional information is needed.
As a division of Waukesha State Bank, Prairie Trust benefits from independence and experienced administrators, many with more than 20 years in the field, allowing them to handle unusual situations without forcing clients into rigid processes.
Estate Settlement: The Work Others Avoid
Many trust companies draw a bright line at estate settlement, becoming less interested when a grantor dies and the potentially difficult work begins—valuing properties, dealing with business interests, filing tax returns, coordinating with attorneys.
“It might be a situation where their trust company does okay in terms of administering the trust, but then when there’s a death, they don’t want to get involved in the estate settlement part of the equation, which is a lot of heavy lifting,” Doyle says. “We’re not afraid of that business.”
Prairie Trust handles estate settlements nationally, often in complex situations. Doyle recalls a recent Florida situation involving a woman with roughly two dozen real estate properties totaling $30 million. Prairie Trust managed the settlement, filed tax returns, and established ongoing trusts. In another case, the firm coordinated the sale of a French chalet.
“Some trust companies are just not staffed to do it, or they’re afraid of it for either potential litigation reasons or some other reasons that just makes it unappealing to them,” he points out.
By handling estate settlements, Prairie Trust provides advisors confidence that clients’ full needs can be met. When the firm serves as trustee from the outset, it already understands family dynamics and assets, ensuring smooth transitions without requiring the advisor to manage multiple service providers.
Specialization in Special Needs Trusts
Prairie Trust deliberately tackles complex special needs trusts that many other firms avoid. Instead of distributing them across general administrators, the firm assigns these trusts to a dedicated team that develops deep expertise.
“Special needs trusts are something that we’re not afraid of at all,” Doyle says. “A lot of trustees get a little nervous about that. We feel that the way to handle special needs trusts is to have a certain group of administrators who do just those and get very good at them.”
The specialized approach helps prevent costly mistakes that can occur when administrators handle special needs trusts occasionally as part of a mixed portfolio. Doyle highlights a common error: beneficiaries might have both first-party and third-party special needs trusts, but an inexperienced administrator might pull distributions from whichever trust has available cash rather than prioritizing the first-party trust subject to Medicaid payback provisions.
“It’s a lot of little things like that that sometimes get missed if you’re not really experienced with a lot of special needs trust administration. Here, with our team, because that’s what the two individuals who do it do for a living and do every day, those sorts of things don’t happen,” he explains.
The specialization enables Prairie Trust to accept special needs trusts of any size, providing options for advisors whose clients need specialized care for beneficiaries with disabilities.
Building Relationships Across Generations
The firm also focuses on multigenerational relationship building. Doyle describes a recent case with an older couple updating their estate plan to name Prairie Trust as successor trustee. The advisor wanted professional management for the wife while ensuring the adult children felt comfortable with the arrangement. Doyle visited the family personally, meeting the grantors and the three adult children who would eventually receive distributions.
“So, you kill two birds with one stone. You make the settlor happy, and at the same time, you get a comfort level with the kids to say: ‘Look, here’s what we’re all about. Here’s what the terms of the trust are. If you’ve got any what-if kind of questions in terms of how we work or based on the terms of the trust, what sort of distributions might be acceptable or might not be, feel free to ask,’” he says.
Prairie Trust charges no fees until serving as trustee, but the upfront relationship building ensures smooth transitions when the time comes.
Making Advisors Look Good
Doyle returns repeatedly to a central theme: Prairie Trust exists to enhance advisor relationships, not compete with them. Many advisors fear that introducing a corporate trustee means gradually losing the client relationship, but at Prairie Trust, the firm maintains clear boundaries around roles and responsibilities.
“We’re here to administer the trust and take care of those sorts of duties, where the advisor is there to manage the trust assets,” Doyle insists. “So, we pretty much go our own way and stay out of each other’s way to a large extent.”
Even so, communication lines stay open, particularly around distributions, beneficiary concerns, or family complications requiring coordination—recognizing the wealth manager’s central role in the relationship.
“The communication remains, and we look at the advisor as being our client as well as the trust beneficiary in those situations too,” Doyle notes.
By building a model around true partnership, maintaining operational flexibility, developing specialized expertise, and consistently prioritizing advisor relationships, Prairie Trust has created a sustainable approach to trust administration where everyone benefits—the advisor maintains the primary relationship, the trust company provides professional fiduciary oversight, and families receive responsive service backed by deep technical knowledge.
“I’m all for just having a nice informal conversation on the front end and saying, ‘Look, here’s how we can help you out. Here’s how we work. Is that something that works for you?’” Doyle says. “And like I say, we want to make the advisor look good. So, any way that we can do that, we’ll certainly give it our best. And we’d love to work with all of them.”
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Additional Resources
- Contact Prairie Trust
- Trust Administration Services
- Estate Settlement Services
- Special Needs Trusts
- Meet the Team
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Disclosures
Non-deposit products are: not insured by the FDIC; are not deposits; and may lose value.
