How To Become A Trust Officer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a trust officer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

This person is also known as a trust administrator. He/She is an individual in the banking industry and is responsible for advising on trust issues. He/She is also in charge of the administration of trust account portfolios of their account.

As a Trust Officer, one of your duties is to manage the day-to-day affairs of diverse personal trust relationships. In addition, you are to assist in managing, developing, and implementing new administrative office methods. You must reconcile federal payroll taxes daily and resolve the balances.

The educational qualifications for this role are a bachelor's degree in finance and accounting and also a certification course in business administration. Other skills include excellent communication skills, accurate knowledge about investment, banking, and finance, ability to think analytically and logically. Your average salary per year is $61,708, depending on your experience.

ScoreTrust OfficerUS Average

Salary

4.8

Avg. Salary $61,493

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

9.5

Growth rate 17%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.4

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.34%

Asian 8.37%

Black or African American 7.79%

Hispanic or Latino 15.01%

Unknown 4.11%

White 64.38%

Gender

female 51.86%

male 48.14%

Age - 46

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 46

Stress level

9.5

Stress level is very high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.3

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.9

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a trust officer

Explore trust officer education requirements

Most common trust officer degrees

Bachelor's

70.2 %

Doctorate

9.9 %

Master's

8.8 %

Start to develop specific trust officer skills

Skills	Percentages
Real Estate	7.77%
Portfolio	7.36%
Wealth Management	7.12%
Business Development	6.64%
Estate Planning	6.24%

Complete relevant trust officer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New trust officers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a trust officer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real trust officer resumes.

Research trust officer duties and responsibilities

Manage personal trusts, special needs trusts, conservatorships, charitable remainder trusts and estates.
Manage processing transfer requests of new IRA accounts and the corresponding follow up and collection activities.
Achieve this through aggressive sales calling on CFO's of large corporations, attorneys, CPAs and political officials.
Manage the day to day affairs of various personal trust relationships, IRAs, custodial accounts, powers of attorney.

Get trust officer experience

Generally, it takes 6-8 years to become a trust officer. The most common roles before becoming a trust officer include administrative assistant, administrator team lead and associate.

Prepare your trust officer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your trust officer resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a trust officer resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable trust officer resume templates

Build a professional trust officer resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your trust officer resume.