Trust Officer

Job Description:

The Trust Officer is responsible for supporting and facilitating the growth and ongoing success of Parallel Advisors. This position reports directly to the Trust Director. As a Trust Officer, you will serve as the primary fiduciary lead for a portfolio of complex trust and estate relationships. This role sits at the intersection of sophisticated estate planning, fiduciary governance, and high-touch client service. You will bridge the gap between the legal structure of trusts and the day-to-day execution of fiduciary administration, ensuring that the intentions of grantors are carried out with precision while maintaining the firm’s gold-standard compliance, documentation, and service standards. The Trust Officer acts as the central coordinator among beneficiaries, attorneys, accountants, and investment advisors, ensuring that every trust relationship is administered prudently, transparently, and in accordance with applicable fiduciary law.

This position is a hybrid position (in-office 3x/ week) in our Beverly Hills, CA office or our San Francisco, CA office.

Responsibilities:

Fiduciary Administration:

• Lead the onboarding and ongoing administration of diverse trust structures, including: Revocable and Irrevocable Trusts, post-death administration accounts, Charitable Remainder Trusts (CRTs), Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs), Dynasty and generation-skipping trusts
• Interpreting trust instruments and amendments, ensuring adherence to fiduciary duties of loyalty, prudence, and impartiality
• Administering trusts in accordance with applicable state law and governing documents
• Overseeing trust account setup, asset transfers, and ongoing recordkeeping
• Ensuring documentation and fiduciary decision-making processes meet regulatory standards
• When serving as trustee or co-trustee following a settlor’s death, lead the administration process, including: gathering and valuing trust assets, coordinating with attorneys and CPAs on estate settlement matters, overseeing payment of debts, expenses, and taxes, managing real estate or closely held business interests, and supervising distributions to beneficiaries and funding of subtrusts

Client & Beneficiary Relationship Management

• Act as the primary fiduciary contact for high-net-worth families and beneficiaries, including interpreting trust provisions for beneficiaries and advisors, explaining distribution policies, managing beneficiary requests and expectations, maintaining neutrality among competing beneficiary interests. navigating complex family dynamics with professionalism and discretion
• Evaluate beneficiary distribution requests and fiduciary decisions involving discretionary authority, including reviewing requests related to health, education, maintenance, and support (HEMS), preparing internal discretionary distribution memoranda, presenting recommendations to the Trust Committee, balancing current beneficiary needs with preservation of remainder interests, and ensuring all discretionary decisions are thoroughly documented and defensible
• Coordinate with investment professionals to ensure trust portfolios are managed prudently by monitoring portfolio allocations for compliance with the Uniform Prudent Investor Act (UPIA), coordinating liquidity needs for distributions or expenses, supervising management of illiquid assets such as real estate or private investments, and reviewing investment performance and risk exposure

Compliance, Risk Management, & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with external tax and legal professionals to ensure accurate and compliant administration by coordinating trust income tax filings (Form 1041), reviewing beneficiary K-1 allocations, working with CPAs on estimated tax payments and tax elections, collaborating with estate attorneys on trust interpretation and legal matters, and ensuring adherence to California-specific trust and probate code requirements
• Managing trust assets, including conducting annual fiduciary administrative reviews (Reg 9 style), ensuring accounts remain compliant with internal policies and regulatory expectations, maintaining documentation supporting discretionary decisions and fiduciary actions, preparing materials for internal fiduciary committees and audits, and identifying and escalating potential conflicts or litigation risks
• Maintaining exceptional documentation and providing proactive risk management to protect both the Firm and its clients.
  

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree required
• 7 - 10+ years of trust administration experience within a trust company, private bakn, or a high-growth RIA with trust services
• Experience administering complex, multi-generational trusts is strongly preferred
• Deep fluency in California Trust & Probate Law, fiduciary standards and discretionary distribution frameworks, federal estate and gift tax rules, trust income taxation, and community property rules and base adjustments
• Strong organizational, analytical, communication, and interpersonal skills
• Strong project management and data analysis skills
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced and deadline-oriented environment
• Capability to manage multiple demands and competing priorities
• JD (Juris Doctor) or CTFA (Certified Trust and Fiduciary Advisor) strongly preferred

Salary and Benefits:

• Salary based upon experience (Salary range $150,000 - $160,000)
• Opportunity for discretionary, semi-annual incentive awards (15% of base salary)
• Benefits including health care, dental, vision, and 401k plans
• Opportunity for support of professional accreditation and continuing education requirements and other professional development

Company: Parallel Advisors, LLC

• Parallel Advisors is a fast-growing, independent, Registered Investment Advisory firm. We are headquartered in San Francisco, CA and have offices in Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas.
• To enhance our clients’ futures, we seek to know where they are today and where they want to be tomorrow. That means understanding not only their assets, such as concentrated stock holdings, real estate, and earning potential but also their aspirations, including all of their future financial goals.
• With this information in-hand, we chart, assess, and evaluate different scenarios based upon their unique objectives, risk tolerances, and time horizons. From this insight, we build a financial framework from which all our recommendations – including savings directives, insurance requirements, and investment strategies – flow. This framework provides a repeatable, measurable way to make objective decisions as to how to allocate their assets now and into their future.
• We offer our clients an open array of investment solutions, fee-based, and independent of any proprietary platforms.
• At Parallel, we combine the best advisors, support staff, and industry-leading technology in collaborative partnership to offer our clients an extraordinary experience.
• Parallel Advisors, LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer.