Hightower Advisors says it has received "conditional approval" from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to convert its Texas-based trust company into a nationally chartered trust company.
"We expect the doors to open in the middle of the fourth quarter and for sure by year-end," said Hightower Chairman and CEO Bob Oros in an interview. After 18 months of work on the development with the OCC, "We are very excited about it," Oros added.
Based in Houston with an office in Chicago, the national trust company will let the 400 advisors affiliated with Hightower provide trust services to their clients. (These advisors work with about $98 billion in assets under management and $121 billion of assets under advisement.)
The trust services "will be available for all our advisors as another tool for complex planning and providing advice tied to multigenerational wealth, tax, estate and other issues," said Oros. "We view it as a really critical service to provide to our advisors."
The head of the national trust will be Tanya D. Simpson, CFP, the former managing director of Charles Schwab Trust Co. and an attorney.
"We did a very thorough search … and had a great group of candidates for this role," Oros explained. "Tanya should be a tremendous fit for us."
