Your options to protect and preserve your assets

Trust Services

All trusts, by design, provide and perpetuate wealth. Depending on your requirements, with proper advice and structuring, a trust can provide many benefits. Not only can it protect your assets, you have greater flexibility in income distribution and can ensure that assets are more effectively transferred from one generation to the next.

Having the ability to establish, manage and act as trustee for your trusts provides you with a greater range of options for your total financial management. Perpetual can help you set up a trust that reflects the kind of income distribution you prefer during your lifetime as well as when and how your estate is distributed.

Learn more about our services including:

To find out more about creating an appropriate trust, you can make an appointment here or speak to our adviser in your area by calling 1800 631 381 during business hours.

Testamentary Trusts

A testamentary trust is one you establish as part of your Will. The trust can serve as an efficient financial structure to safeguard all, or a portion, of your estate, to invest the assets prudently and to distribute the estate’s assets and income to your beneficiaries according to your wishes.

The flexibility Perpetual can build into your trust enables the management and distribution of assets to be altered as circumstances change or when beneficiaries reach milestones in their lives.  For example, this flexibility can reduce the tax burden on your estate by allowing your trustee to vary distributions when tax rules change, or by reallocating income as beneficiaries enter new tax brackets.  Your trustee may also be given the discretion to modify the distribution of income, or to utilise some of the capital to accommodate changes to a family member’s circumstances.

Compensation Trusts

People who have been awarded compensation for serious injury not only require ongoing medical care but also special financial care.  Perpetual can help ensure compensation payments are safeguarded and invested appropriately to provide the financial support required for specific needs. This includes a regular income stream as well as any special funds required for medical care or modifications to the family home.

Other ongoing trusts

Perpetual can help you establish an appropriate trust for your family during your lifetime. Consider these examples of trusts:

  • Discretionary trust – or Family trust in which the trustee decides which beneficiaries receive income or capital and to what extent. Superannuation proceeds trusts can also be set up as discretionary trusts.
  • Superannuation proceeds trusts – to receive a lump sum death benefit payment from a super fund. This also takes advantage of concessional tax treatment, directs assets to specific dependents, and can flexibly distribute income and capital yearly.
  • Protective trust – to earmark funds for specific purposes or access, whether for a disadvantaged or spendthrift child. 
  • Unit trust – where beneficiaries hold units in a trust, much like a company.
  • Charitable trust – a range of charitable vehicles to suit the philanthropic intent of most individuals, families and companies.

Tired of trusteeship?

You may be a trustee but want to retire. You can do so by transferring your trusteeship to Perpetual. Or you may own property jointly with others. There may be disagreement about the sale of the property - Perpetual can be appointed trustee for sale and thus bring an impartial view to resolving the disagreement. 

You can make an appointment here or speak to one of our advisers in your area by calling 1800 631 381 during business hours. To see a range of our comprehensive wealth management services, visit Private Clients. 

Our Trust Investment Philosophy

We make these 12 commitments in our trust investment philosophy:
 We will take a long term approach to investing
 We will diversify our trust investment portfolios, both across and within asset classes to reduce risk
 We will not attempt to time markets or tactically asset allocate across asset sectors
 We will not attempt to trade investments within an asset class in an attempt to increase short term performance
 We will use both managed and direct investments as appropriate 
 We will manage the investment income needs of trust beneficiaries, including the need for a growing income stream in the future
 We will aim to protect the real capital value of our trust investment portfolios as well as aiming to achieve a reasonable rate of capital growth as appropriate to the circumstances
 We will take into account the effects of taxation and costs in managing an investment portfolio
 We will be flexible in meeting the needs of co-trustees and all beneficiaries while maintaining the consistency of our principles
We will take into account:
 The situations of the beneficiaries, including the circumstances, needs and interests of the life and remainder beneficiaries as known to us; and
 The need for income, including the interests of life beneficiaries; and
 The need for capital growth, including the interests of remainder beneficiaries.

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