China is experiencing the largest-scale aging process in its history. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, by the end of 2025, the population aged 60 and above reached 323.4 million, an increase of 13.07 million from the previous year, accounting for 23% of the national population. A deeper challenge lies in the fact that with the increase in elderly individuals living alone, DINK (double income, no kids) families, and families who have lost their only child, the traditional family-based elderly care system is collapsing at an accelerated pace.

"Having money and a house, but no one to entrust it to" is a dilemma increasingly faced by urban seniors. The core question that elderly care service trusts aim to solve is: how can seniors arrange their later years while they are still lucid, and ensure these arrangements are faithfully executed even after they become incapacitated?

The exploration by Shanghai Trust provides a model. By deeply integrating voluntary guardianship with the trust system, it achieves a separation of "managing personal care" and "managing finances," ensuring that the property wishes of the elderly are rigidly enforced even after they lose their capacity to act. From China's first "Voluntary Guardianship + Special Needs Trust" case to the "An Yang Trust Account" starting at 300,000 yuan, this path is moving from special groups to ordinary families, gradually forming a replicable model.

Of course, the path to popularizing elderly care service trusts is not smooth. The cognitive gap regarding trusts among ordinary families, institutional barriers to transferring multi-asset forms, and the cost of linking the elderly care service ecosystem are practical constraints. These factors determine that this track cannot be completed by a single financial institution alone; it requires systemic coordination of policies, institutions, and social resources.

The pilot program for elderly care service trusts jointly promoted by four departments in Shanghai may be the beginning of this coordination. For the trust industry, elderly care service trusts are not just a new business track but also the best annotation of returning to the original purpose of "entrusted by others, loyal to their affairs." Whether they can become the "wealth guardians" truly trusted by the elderly will be the ultimate test of a trust company's proactive management ability and long-term fiduciary responsibility.