When something goes wrong in a trust account — a performance outlier, a missed annual review, a beneficiary dispute — the first question examiners ask is: what did your reporting show, and when?
For many bank trust departments, that question is harder to answer than it should be. Some institutions limit performance monitoring to larger accounts to control costs. Others rely on trust accounting reports alone, without the investment performance layer that gives a complete picture of fiduciary oversight. And when it comes time to assemble evidence packages for an exam, the process is more manual — and more stressful — than it needs to be.
GreenHill Investment Reporting has published a new white paper that addresses all of this directly: The Importance of Performance Reporting in Trust Investment Management. It was researched and written by Mark Gray, an independent trust and fiduciary expert, at the request of GreenHill — and his background in fiduciary administration and trust compliance gives the paper a practical, examiner-ready perspective throughout.
The paper gives trust officers, compliance leaders, and bank executives a clear framework for fiduciary reporting obligations under the Uniform Trust Code, explains what OCC guidance under 12 CFR 9.6 actually requires from your annual investment review process, makes a compelling case for why excluding smaller accounts from performance monitoring can backfire — smaller accounts tend to generate more beneficiary disputes, not fewer — and concludes with a 14-strategy best practice checklist covering gap analysis, exception tracking, internal controls, benchmark governance, and technology.
If your trust department hasn’t taken a hard look at its performance reporting practices recently, this paper is a direct and practical place to start.