Cresset Aims for $13.1B Trust Business with NAT Deal
Cresset Capital Management, a multi-family office based in New York overseeing more than $250 billion in client assets, is nearing the acquisition of National Advisors Trust, a move that would create a $13.1 billion national trust business serving both Cresset and external advisors.
In an announcement, Cresset said it was “pursuing” a combination with Leawood, Kan.-based NAT. NAT oversees $7.7 billion in trust assets under administration for independent advisors, institutions and families.
Cresset executives said they will move the firm’s $5.4 billion trust and services division, which currently operates with its own state charters, onto the NAT platform.
“Over time, we expect to transition Cresset’s existing trust business onto the NAT platform, leveraging NAT’s national trust charter, infrastructure, technology, experience and trust capabilities rather than maintaining two separate platforms,” a Cresset spokesperson wrote in an email. “Importantly, this will enable Cresset to offer clients access to trust services through a national trust charter.”
If the transaction is completed, Cresset will “become a client of NAT,” while also investing in the firm to keep growing its external advisor client base and pursuing acquisitions.
“We believe the combination strengthens both organizations: expanding the trust capabilities Cresset can offer its clients while providing NAT with additional resources to grow its platform and serve Cresset and its broader advisor client base at scale,” the spokesperson wrote.
NAT was founded in 2001 and runs a white-label program, Brand Advantage, for advisors to offer trust services to clients under their own branding. It currently partners with more than 340 wealth firms, 13,000 advisors and 17,000 families in the United States.
The deal also “represents an expansion of national trust services for the independent RIA and family office sector, which has very much been needed,” Cresset CEO Susie Cranston said in a statement.
Other RIAs have either created in-house trust practices or added them through acquisition. Earlier this year, Alvarez & Marsal Private Wealth Partners, the RIA launched by A&M Inc., the parent company of management consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal, created its own national trust company.
In 2024, F.L.Putnam Investment Management Company bolted on a trust division by acquiring New Hampshire-chartered Darwin Trust Company.
Cresset has been an aggressive acquirer of wealth practices across the wirehouse and RIA landscape. Last year, it added a $124 billion institutional consulting firm, Monticello Associates, which serves foundations, endowments and family offices.
Cresset’s deal for NAT was first reported by Citywire RIA.
