Equity Trust Company

Equity Trust Company is a self-directed IRA and retirement account custodian based in Westlake, Ohio. As a directed custodian it performs the custodial and administrative duties for each account while the account holder decides what to buy; it does not give tax, legal, or investment advice and does not offer or sponsor proprietary investment products.

Accounts can hold alternative assets, including real estate, private equity and entity interests, promissory notes, precious metals, and cryptocurrency, alongside traditional stocks, bonds, and mutual funds in the same account. Account types include traditional and Roth IRAs, the Universal IRA, solo and Roth solo 401(k)s, and a real estate checkbook IRA LLC. Related services cover 1031 exchanges, 990-T tax preparation, self-clearing retirement services, and the Wealthbridge investment portal, and Equity Institutional Services, formerly Midland Trust, works with issuers and sponsors raising capital from investors' retirement accounts.

The business traces back to a brokerage founded in 1974 and has been privately owned by the same family since then. The predecessor was approved by the IRS as a non-bank directed custodian in 1983, the first self-directed IRA real estate transaction followed in 1984, custodial service extended to all 50 states in 1996, and Equity Trust Company itself was formed and obtained its trust charter in 2003. It acquired Texas-based Sterling Trust's accounts in 2009, which became Equity Institutional, and formed Equity Advisor Solutions in 2011.

Equity Trust is regulated as a South Dakota trust company by the South Dakota Division of Banking, and its financial statements are audited annually by an independent certified public accountant under AICPA standards. It reports 368,000 accounts holding $73 billion in retirement assets, 500+ associates, and 2.1M+ transactions a year. The fee schedule is not shown on the pages crawled, so request the current one along with transaction-level charges.