Bank Rhode Island farms out trust and investment pieces to family-owned Coastline. Bank Rhode Island has formed a private banking division and outsourced the new unit’s trust and investment services to Coastline Trust. Formerly FirstFed Trust, Providence-based Coastline is an investment manager to high-net-worth clients that is owned by members of the Metcalf and Danforth families.

Bank Rhode Island will deliver its private banking services through something called “One Trust and Private Banking,” which it says “will provide customers a locally based, integrated platform for organizing all aspects of their financial life, from savings and checking to long-term investments.” A Bank Rhode Island “One” account holder will work with a “seasoned Bank Rhode Island relationship manager who will coordinate customer needs.”

Bank Rhode Island says it is providing private banking services to capture assets from wealthy retirees. In addition to requiring cash and risk management capabilities, Bank Rhode Island says these well-off retirees “are moving away from investments focused solely on growth, to preservation and stability.” It also asserts that these clients prefer “a single financial service provider as a coordinator of the specialists needed to manage their diversified planning” and, by implication, that they like their wealth-service coordinators to work for locally-owned companies.

“We are especially positive about our alliance with Coastline Trust,” says Bank Rhode Island’s president and CEO Merrill Sherman. “It has the high-quality, high-service orientation we value, as well as a longer-term, relationship-focused approach to service delivery.”

And as Bank Rhode Island stands to benefit from an association with blueblood-owned Coastline, Coastline stands to benefit from access to Bank Rhode Island’s 15-branch distribution network “and [Bank Rhode Island’s] ability to deliver unparalleled customer relationship management,” says Coastline CEO Paul Whyte.

Rhode Island has seen several wealth management deals in recent months. Earlier this year Mellon Financial’s Boston-based wealth management unit bought Providence Group Investment Advisory, a private-client investment boutique with about $750 million in assets under management. In March Westerly, R.I.-based Washington Trust agreed to buy Weston Financial Group, a financial planning and investment consulting firm with about $1.3 billion in assets under administration.

Bank Rhode Island had assets of $1.3 billion and deposits of $901.1 million at the end of March 2005.

Providence-based Coastline is a Rhode Island-chartered bank and trust company. It had responsibility for about $800 million in assets at the end of March 2005. –FWR