Counsel Trust Company provides a comprehensive suite of investment advisory
and management, consulting, retirement plan, custody, and fiduciary trust services to individuals and organizations, as well as services to independent Registered Investment Advisors. In continuous business since 1986, the principals of Counsel Trust Company have trust and investment banking backgrounds and experience. Our trust structure enables us to offer clients access to both passive and active investment opportunities not otherwise available to many investors.
This is accomplished in part by the trust structure and fiduciary platform enabling Counsel Trust Company to create and offer private equity funds to clients. Also, our relationships with other significant consulting firms and hard-to-reach institutional mutual funds enhance this capability. These funds have delivered strong performance, lower volatility and broad, global diversification to client asset-allocated portfolios.
Our clients invest alongside very large pension and endowment portfolios that retain some of the best active money managers, low-cost institutional funds, hedge funds and private equity funds.
We help clients achieve their investment growth goals while mitigating risk and avoiding investment hazards so prevalent in today’s markets. This is achieved by emphasizing asset safety, quality and a customized, disciplined asset allocation plan. Counsel Trust Company helps clients adhere to the plan, re-balancing among asset classes at different intervals throughout the year—all at a very competitive and reasonable fee structure.
Our History
ECA Investment Group, a Registered Investment Advisory (RIA), was founded in 1986 by Edward S. Crooks. The firm provided investment consulting and management services to businesses, individuals, employee-benefit plans and nonprofit organizations.
Counsel Trust Company was founded in early 2002 by Edward S. Crooks, Brian D. Selby and several other investors, both working within and outside the firm to provide custody, trust and other fiduciary services to ECA and other RIA firms employing a similar culture and investment style.
In 2016, ECA Investment Group Inc. was merged into Counsel Trust Company.
In late August of 2018, Counsel Trust Company successfully converted its Trust Charter from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the State of Tennessee. A new trust office was opened in Nashville, TN, being managed in conjunction with the three existing Pennsylvania offices in York, Lancaster and Hanover.
Tennessee trust statutes were recently revised, offering a superior trust law environment, reflecting ‘best in class’ trust laws of other ‘trust friendly’ states such as Nevada, South Dakota and Delaware. Tennessee trust laws are consistently ranked among the best trust law states in the U.S., providing greater flexibility and trust planning opportunities.
