Standard Bank offers fiduciary services including wills, trusts and the administration of deceased estates. The contact routes below were read from Standard Bank’s own site on 2 September 2026.
Official contact channels
- Personal banking: 0860 123 000
- From outside South Africa: +27 10 824 1515
- Online: the call-me-back form on standardbank.co.za
- In person: a branch, using the branch locator
Standard Bank publishes no separate trust, fiduciary or deceased estates telephone number. Every trust and estates path on its site returns a not-found page, so the route is the personal banking line, asking to be put through to fiduciary or estates services. Knowing that saves hunting for a dedicated number that is not published.
Consultants are available Monday to Sunday, 08:00 to 22:00.
What this organisation provides
Fiduciary services cover drafting a will, acting as executor of a deceased estate, and establishing and administering trusts, alongside the bank’s wealth and estate planning offering.
The bank is not in charge of a deceased estate – the Master of the High Court is. This is the single most useful thing to understand. A death must be reported to the Master, who appoints the executor and issues Letters of Executorship. Until those are issued, nobody – including the bank – may deal with the estate’s assets.
The deceased’s bank accounts are frozen on notification of death. Debit orders stop, and a surviving spouse cannot simply keep drawing on a joint arrangement. Money for immediate expenses usually has to come from elsewhere until the estate is wound up.
Address and operating information
Standard Bank publishes no dedicated fiduciary office address. Estate matters are handled through branches and the personal banking line rather than at a walk-in estates counter.
Bring the death certificate, the deceased’s identity document, the will if there is one, and your own identity document. Once appointed, an executor produces the Letters of Executorship, which is the document the bank acts on.
An estate late account is opened in the name of the estate to receive its funds and settle its debts. That account, not the deceased’s old one, is where estate money moves.
Support and escalation routes
Raise delays on 0860 123 000 with the estate number and the executor’s details, and put anything substantive in writing. Estates are slow by nature – several months is normal, and longer where assets are complex or the will is contested.
The escalation is not a banking ombud. A complaint about how an estate is being administered goes to the Master of the High Court in the jurisdiction where the estate was reported, because the executor answers to the Master. Executor fees are capped by regulation – ask for the tariff in writing if the fee looks wrong.
Where the complaint concerns financial advice given about a trust or estate plan, that goes to the Ombud for Financial Services Providers (FAIS Ombud) instead. Only a banking service failure goes to the National Financial Ombud Scheme’s banking division.
Sources
- standardbank.co.za contact us page, read 2 September 2026