Citywealth's 2026 Top 75 Trustees and IFC Family Office list is out. What it counts, and what it asks of the people on it.

Citywealth published its Leaders List: Top 75 Trustees and IFC Family Office 2026 in the first week of July. It is the trustee and offshore section of a wider Leaders List that reopened on 1 July, and it names individuals who administer trusts and advise wealthy families across the main international financial centres.

For a directory that maps who advises private families, a trustee list is worth reading closely, because the job it describes has changed.

What the list measures

Citywealth reports that trustees are taking on a broader strategic role as families deal with geopolitical uncertainty, tax reform, regulatory change and the transfer of wealth between generations. The trends it points to include more cross-border planning, higher compliance costs, a rise in beneficiary litigation, stronger demand for governance and succession work, digital assets moving into trust structures, and renewed interest in offshore jurisdictions. Its contributors add that, for all the technology now used in administration, the trusted human relationship is still what marks out good trusteeship.

That is a fair description of what a family actually buys from a trustee today. It sits well beyond the old picture of a custodian who holds assets and signs documents.

How it is built

The method matters as much as the names. Citywealth compiles the list from peer nominations, then verifies each one through references from clients and peers. A profile has to carry a set number of online reviews each year to stay listed, and those reviews are monitored by its editorial team. Individuals can earn separate marks for being recommended by peers, by private clients, or by institutions such as banks and wealth firms.

In other words, a place on this list is earned from people willing to vouch for the individual on the record. That is a different currency from assets under management or firm size, and it is harder to manufacture.

How to read it

This is one source among several. Chambers ranks private client lawyers, Spear’s ranks wealth managers and advisers, and each uses its own definitions and evidence. A single appearance tells you an individual cleared one publication’s bar this year. It does not tell you they are the right trustee for a particular family, or that they would appear on a list built to other criteria.

The pattern worth acting on is recognition across independent sources at once. A trustee who turns up on the Citywealth list and is also rated by researchers using a different method has been judged credible by people who share neither an approach nor a commercial interest. That overlap is the signal we track.

So note who is on the 2026 list, then check who else rates the same names. One list is a place to start. Several that agree, reached separately, are worth more.

Sources: Citywealth — Leaders List: Top 75 Trustees and IFC Family Office 2026; Citywealth — Leaders List methodology.