Complaint / Review
Sterling Trust
Beware and be prepared for a lot of work

I have been working since late November with Sterling Trust to transfer a Real Estate Partnership asset to a new IRA I opened with them. This has been the most frustrating exercise I have ever undertaken with a financial institution. Each step of the process has required follow-up by me with Sterling: (1) notifying the institution (Vanguard) which originally held the asset; (2) confirming that Sterling received the asset from Vanguard; and (3) notifying the Partnership of the change in custodian from Vanguard to Sterling so that future dividends will be remitted to Sterling.

Sterling has no process in place to advise its clients of the status of actions being taken on their accounts. Nor, most importantly, does it follow-up on any pending actions without the client's inquiry. That is, if I had not called to inquire, for example, about the status with Vanguard, no further action would have been taken by Sterling to complete the transfer. Given that you are on hold for 2 hours any time you call for an update, the whole process becomes very burdensome and very frustrating.

I am writing this to warn others that, if you choose to do business with Sterling Trust, be prepared to ride herd with each step and to spend a miserable amount of time on hold.