North State rolls out wealth services

FWR Staff

20 June 2005

Community bank turns to third-party provider. Raleigh, N.C.-based North State Bank has begun offering wealth management services through Capital Investment Companies, an independent brokerage and financial service provider. The five-year-old community bank has also named Lyle “Chip” Finley director of its wealth management business, a new position.

“We are fortunate to have Chip join our banking team,” says North State CEO Larry Barbour. “Our customers will benefit from his investment experience in the areas of financial planning, estate planning and retirement planning.”

Finley had been an investment consultant with Central Carolina Bank, which merged with Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks late last year.

North State provides business and personal banking services to “a lot” of local business owners, according to Finley. That makes it a promising conduit for wealth management services. “People come to banks to establish a relationship,” says Finley. “Wealth management is aimed at enhancing those relationships.” In addition to getting word of North State’s new capabilities to existing customers, Finley says he will work on bringing in affluent customers “from outside.”

Finley says North State’s participation in Capital Investment’s “Bank Securities” program is vital to its efforts. “It’s not just an investment platform; it’s a wealth management platform” that includes independent brokerage, money management, insurance and estate planning, trusts, retirement plans, mortgages and investment banking. North State is one of 15 or so community banks in North Carolina and South Carolina that provide such services through Capital Investment.

Raleigh-based Capital Investment is a “typical” regional broker-dealer in some ways, says Bill Bright, its director of business development. “We’re not a big firm and we’ve never wanted to be.” But he adds that Capital Investment’s “complete in-house wealth and money management capabilities make us highly unusual.” The company’s investment offerings include proprietary and non-proprietary products.

Bright says Capital Investment, which caters to individuals and corporations as well as accountants and community banks, has been garnering more interest from banks lately. Of those, he says the ones with in-house trust services are quickest to grasp the principals of wealth management: open – or at least “enhanced” – architecture coupled with goal-based planning and reporting. Banks without trust departments, however, are more open-minded and, by and large, less operationally and culturally resistant to third-party offerings.

North State has three retail branches in Raleigh and one in nearby Garner, N.C. It has about $315 million in total assets. –FWR

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