Double-digit growth eyed for wealth unit

Bank One Corp. is on the prowl for talent – adviser talent – to help it become a one-stop shop for the rich.

That requires more than tripling the number of advisers – to 2,000, from 600 – says Peter Atwater, chief executive officer of Bank One’s newly created private-client-services division.

“We need as much talent as we can get,” says Mr. Atwater, who took on his role when the unit was created six months ago.

“I operate in 80 markets. I’d like to operate in 100 markets if I can find the people.”

The fifth-largest U.S. bank, which has been hunkering down after a money-losing year, is planning to expand its services for rich clients beyond its retail footprint.

Its long-term goal is to open private-client-services offices in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“I need people who bring investment expertise from an adviser – versus a brokerage – mind-set. I need more generalists,” Mr. Atwater says.

ambitious

Bank One wants to be nationally recognized as a specialist for rich clients just as Northern Trust Corp. and U.S. Trust Corp. are.

Mr. Atwater wants Bank One to be the premier brand for “advice and total solutions.”

“I can’t find a national brand that is recognized as delivering the full complement of financial services to the high-net-worth world. Everyone today has piece of it,” he says.

“I don’t think there is anybody who is clearly succeeding in this area. I think everybody has reasonable success in particular pieces of it, but it is a big leap culturally, philosophically, to being a truly integrated firm.”

Bank One officials are aware of those challenges and admit that the bank’s private-client-services unit has had “relatively insignificant” penetration of corporate clients in the commercial bank.

Mr. Atwater says that bank departments operate like “silos” – a problem that officials are trying to fix through a referral program.

Overall, the goal is ambitious for a bank that’s had trouble building its retail brand with the average Joe Six-Pack, let alone Joseph Dom Perignon.

But the bank wants double-digit growth in its private-client-services business. With $56.6 billion under management, Mr. Atwater says private-client services has stanched the flow of funds out of the bank. Now the challenge is to get them to flow in.

The key, he says, is advisers who are the single point of contact for clients, backed by experts.

“I look at this business as sort of the Holy Grail in financial services,” says Mr. Atwater. “It is here, I think, that true integration of all of the businesses that banks have wanted to be in will finally play out.”

Bank One is not alone in its quest to expand its private-client services. Building up a high-net-worth business and hiring point people for those clients has been a priority at banks and other financial service companies for some years.

Demand

“The whole area of advice is in high demand,” says Scott Slater, a director at Spectrem Group, a consulting firm in Chicago specializing in the high-net-worth and retirement markets. Banks are trying to form teams that can service those markets … and they will continue to hire and build and focus on this business.”

The fact that there’s no timetable for Bank One’s expansion isn’t surprising to Harry Milling, a financial services analyst with Morningstar Inc. in Chicago.

“It depends on their limited resources and how they can allocate them,” Mr. Milling says.

He sees that Bank One’s chairman and chief executive officer, James Dimon, has other priorities – from improving service and efficiency on the retail side to making the corporate lending area more profitable.

“Bank One may build this segment at a slower rate than Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch, who are building this full-force.”