National Trust Company

The National Trust Company is a Canadian trust company that has existed since 1898. The company was formed by George Albertus Cox and originally was part of a network of financial companies he controlled. In its first year of operations the company opened an office in Montreal, and in its second year it expanded to Western Canada through the acquisition of the Manitoba Trust Company. National Trust played an important role in the development of the west through the issuance of farm mortgages. For the first half-century of its life, National Trust was primarily a fiduciary operation and acted as a trustee for major concerns such as the Canadian Northern Railway, Brazilian Traction, and Barcelona Traction. After the onset of the Great Depression, the company struggled for the next two decades.

In the early 1950s, National Trust expanded beyond its fiduciary operations and developed a deposit and savings arm. Over the next three decades, the company opened 50 satellite branches and grew its deposits from $27 million in 1947 to $3 billion in 1983. In 1984, National Trust merged with the Victoria and Grey Trust Company; the new merged company was owned by V&G's holding company, which assumed the name National Trustco. In 1991, the Bank Act was amended to allow bank holding companies to own trust companies, which hitherto had been prohibited. Consequently, in 1997, the Bank of Nova Scotia acquired National Trustco for $1.25 billion. Since that time, National Trust has been a subsidiary of the bank.