Move over, financial planners. Make room, attorneys. Banks are ramping up their private banking and wealth management services in a big way, bidding to take care of wealthy clients’ every financial need.
Of course, some banks have always offered better services and expanded product lines for their best customers. In the last five years, however, more and more banks are offering a combination of private banking and comprehensive wealth management.
What’s driving them to expand their horizons? The Gramm-Leach-Bliley act of 1999 allows banks to affiliate with securities firms, a crucial ability for any bank that wants to offer one-stop financial shopping. Banks are attracted to the new income streams private banking and wealth management offer, and by the possibility of combining business and personal financial services to create extra loyalty and business from existing clients.
These banks tout their warm, highly personal, customized service, often provided by experienced bankers with light client loads that allow them to offer individual attention. Services can include investment, insurance, wealth management, estate planning, and creative lending. Their ideal clients include Minnesota’s business owners, executives, and professionals such as doctors and lawyers.
With so many choices, there might be something to intrigue just about anyone interested in a wealth management relationship.
Private Bank Minnesota
pbmn.com
Who qualifies: No minimum.
There’s a lot you can get for free at Minneapolis-based Private Bank Minnesota, including wire transfers, cashier’s checks, Internet banking, cash management services, and automatic bill paying. Rather than tap fees as a source of income, “we earn our money through lending,” says Vicki Turnquist, the bank’s executive officer and co-founder.
To do that, she says, Private Bank focuses on the intersection between personal assets and business needs. “We may be lending to a business, but our primary reliance is always on personal financial statements. We are not a true business bank,” Turnquist says.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t make business loans. Private Bank Minnesota writes loans for customers who need business startup capital, lines of working capital, commercial real estate mortgages, or investment lending. As an example, David Waldo, the bank’s co-founder and CEO, describes two clients who are starting a business and need equipment loans and working capital. “It’s your standard service business, with no lendable assets,” Waldo says. Private Bank will write the loan and back it with the borrowers’ personal assets.
