Small-town RIA crosses the street to become part of local savings and loan. Muncie, Ind.-based Mutual Federal Savings Bank has acquired Wagley Investment Advisors, a registered investment advisory. The bank says the acquisition will increase its client base by expanding its investment-management services.

Details of the transaction weren't disclosed.

A little advice

Mutual Federal has been offering investment services -- mainly mutual funds and annuities -- through its brokerage since 1982. The addition of Wagley Investment Advisors lets the bank provide what it calls "true wealth management," which in this case amounts to internally managed individual-stock and tax-free-bond portfolios.

"Some clients seek information to make their own investment decisions while others look for competent, full service money managers," says John Bowles, head of investment management and private banking at Mutual Federal. "Wagley Investment Advisors will help fill that need for our clients."

Muncie, Ind.-based Wagley Investment Advisors, founded in 1991 by firm principals Thomas Wagley and David Riggs, will change its name to Mutual Financial Advisors, and Wagley and Riggs will stick around to run it. The firm manages about $50 million in assets, mainly for private clients who fall short of the Securities and Exchange Commission's definition of "high-net-worth individual" as a person "with at least $750,000 managed by [an advisory], or whose net worth [the advisory] reasonably believes exceeds $1.5 million."

Once Wagley and Riggs make the move to Mutual Federal -- literally across the street from the offices they now occupy -- they plan to hand many of their smaller accounts to the bank's brokers.

Wagley, who calls the hook-up with Mutual Federal "a wonderful opportunity to take what Wagley Investment Advisors has successfully done and make our exceptional investment advisory services available to a larger audience," says the deal with Mutual Federal is beneficial to both parties.

"I was getting to the point where I wanted to start slowing up anyway, and they preferred to buy an investment advisor firm rather than build one or get into a trust right away," says Wagley.

Mutual Federal has $960.7 million in assets and 21 branches in eastern Indiana. -FWR

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