New Direction Trust Company: Platform Profile

Overview

New Direction Trust Company, commonly shortened to NDTCO, is a Kansas-chartered limited-purpose non-fiduciary trust company that serves as custodian for self-directed retirement accounts.

Current legal documents distinguish two entities:

• Custodian: New Direction Trust Company
• Administrator: New Direction IRA, Inc.

New Direction IRA acts as the administrator and agent of the custodian.

That distinction should remain explicit in the review.

Current supported strategies include broad alternative assets, Checkbook IRA LLC structures, precious metals, private lending, private equity, real estate, and public-market access through a connected brokerage account.

The largest 2026 operational change is public securities.

NDTCO stopped making new direct public-security purchases and moved new trading access to SogoTrade.

May fit better for

• investors seeking broad alternative-asset custody;
• investors using private equity, private debt, precious metals, or real estate;
• users seeking an IRA LLC/checkbook structure;
• investors who want public securities alongside alternatives through a connected brokerage route;
• investors comfortable with a passive non-fiduciary custodian;
• investors willing to verify the live fee schedule for their exact asset mix.

May fit less well for

• investors who want the custodian to recommend or approve investments;
• users expecting direct stock and ETF execution by NDTCO;
• investors who want one all-inclusive published fee number;
• users who confuse SogoTrade's brokerage role with NDTCO's custodial role;
• investors who assume the custodian evaluates investment suitability;
• investors who want guaranteed liquidity for private assets.

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Current legal structure

Current 2026 account agreements state:

• Custodian: New Direction Trust Company
• Custodian role: limited-purpose non-fiduciary trust company
• Charter state: Kansas
• Administrator: New Direction IRA, Inc.
• Administrator role: agent of custodian

NDTCO holds custodial assets and executes depositor-directed transactions.

NDIRA performs delegated administrative services.

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Passive non-fiduciary status

Current NDTCO disclosures repeatedly state that the company acts as a passive, directed, non-fiduciary custodian.

This does not mean the account is free of retirement-law requirements.

It means the account owner, not NDTCO, makes the investment decision.

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2026 public-securities transition

On January 21, 2026, NDTCO announced that it was discontinuing direct purchases of public securities.

The transition period ended 30 calendar days after the January 20 announcement.

Current treatment:

• New direct public security purchases by NDTCO: No
• Effective transition: 2026-02-19
• New public security route: SogoTrade
• NDTCO custodies connected SogoTrade account: Yes

Existing public securities held directly at NDTCO can be liquidated or transferred under current procedures.

For new purchases, the investor opens a SogoTrade account through the NDTCO IRA relationship.

The SogoTrade account is treated as an asset of the NDTCO IRA.

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Current public-securities cost references

Current NDTCO transition materials state:

• NDTCO public securities annual administration: $135
• SogoTrade annual administration: $25
• NDTCO wire into SogoTrade: $35
• SogoTrade stocks ETFs: $0
• SogoTrade mutual funds: $25
• SogoTrade crypto: greater of $1 or 1% of trade value

Current page also states:

• NDTCO options custody in this model: No
• NDTCO crypto custody in this model: No

The current page explicitly states those direct-purchase fees were removed from the NDTCO fee schedule effective February 19, 2026.

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General fee-schedule

The live NDTCO fee page is the controlling source for account-specific current fees.

The publicly retrievable current legal/help materials do not establish one complete current universal private-asset annual-fee table suitable for permanent structured fields in this package.

Current terms and disclosures do establish selected charges and conditions, including:

• Late fee: $40 every 30 days when applicable
• Mortgage on real estate separate asset fee: $235

Those values are narrower current references.

They are not a substitute for the full live fee schedule.

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Alternative-asset support

Current NDTCO materials support broad self-directed investing.

A Checkbook IRA LLC can hold investments through an IRA-owned entity, subject to applicable tax and prohibited-transaction rules.

The IRA LLC does not eliminate the custodian.

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Precious metals

Current NDTCO precious-metals materials require the IRA's metals to use an appropriate third-party depository structure.

NDTCO does not endorse a specific metal, dealer, or investment outcome.

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Private lending

Current materials support private lending inside self-directed accounts.

The account owner is responsible for evaluating:

• borrower quality;
• collateral;
• loan documents;
• interest rate;
• repayment risk;
• liquidity.

Custody is not credit underwriting.

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Account types

Current NDTCO materials and agreements support:

• Traditional IRA: Yes
• Roth IRA: Yes
• SEP IRA: Yes
• SIMPLE IRA: Yes
• HSA: Yes
• Solo 401K: Yes

Product-specific eligibility and contribution rules apply.

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Protection and liquidity

Private assets held in an SDIRA can be illiquid.

NDTCO's custodial role does not provide:

• Guaranteed liquidity: No
• Guaranteed return: No
• Market loss protection: No
• Investment due diligence: No

SogoTrade public securities have a separate brokerage and regulatory structure.

Assessment

NDTCO's 2026 review has one fact that older reviews can easily miss:

new direct public-security purchases moved away from NDTCO and into a connected SogoTrade brokerage account.

That changes both the operating model and the fee comparison.

The NDTCO IRA remains the custodial account.

SogoTrade provides the trading account for new public-market purchases.

The second important point is fee discipline.

A stale historical PDF should not be treated as the current private-asset fee schedule when NDTCO's live 2026 materials direct clients to the current fee page and expose only selected current amounts in retrievable text.

The review should therefore use current verified numbers where available and leave unsupported universal fee fields undisclosed.

That is more accurate than presenting a complete-looking but stale table.