3 Banks Courting the Super-Rich
The people have spoken: they don't want higher fees, or any more fees than they already have. From debit card swipe fees to credit card interest rates, people are up in arms about all this 
extra money that the banks are sucking out of them. In fact, between September 29th and November 5th, known as "Bank Transfer Day," more than $4 billion of new accounts were opened with credit unions (supposedly, that’s money out of the hands of banks). So, these banks find themselves faced with a problem: how to raise more money to make their stockholders happy?
The answer? Go where the money is: namely, "wealth management." Here are three banks looking for the money of the extremely rich. (It’s a pretty good bet you won’t see these advertised on TV.)
1. Abbot Downing
Better Known to You As: Wells Fargo
Minimum Deposit: $50 million in assets
Why is Wells Fargo getting into the "wealth management" game? Partially out of necessity. Wells Fargo bought Wachovia Bank for $14 billion, and just like Bank of America is finding Countrywide to be a millstone around its neck, Wachovia is giving Wells Fargo its own set of problems. So, Wells Fargo needs more money, and combining Lowry Hill, a private asset management firm it owns, and Wells Fargo Family Wealth, seems to be just the ticket.
But why the name? Abbot Downing is actually an in-joke: Wells Fargo started out as a stagecoach company, and the original Abbot Downing was a stagecoach manufacturing company. Now, as to whether that's the message they want to send to the rest of their clients...that's on them.
2. Barclays Wealth
Better Known To You As: What's left of Lehman Brothers
Minimum Deposit: Roughly $40 to $60 million, depending on what you hold in assets.
Barclays has been in the business of making the rich richer for a long, long time; they started out back in 1690 as a gold trading firm. But they had to ramp their wealth management business up considerably when they bought Lehman Brothers, which of course had a record-breaking bankruptcy of $613 billion. Lehman lost a lot of clients and a lot of assets in the bankruptcy, but those few that were left wanted customer service for their loyalty...and Barclays found that wealth management was a growing field.
3. UBS
Better Known To You As: Paine Webber, the stockbroker UBS acquired.
Minimum Deposit: Varies, especially since they're the scrappy underdog.
You have to feel bad for UBS: until these mega-banks came along, it was the big dog on the wealth management block. Now it's fighting for clients. But it's not going to collapse any time soon; it trades upwards of $1 trillion every day.
So, What About the Little Guy?
It's up to you whether you want to keep your money in these banks, but t's worth remembering that banks, at root, are businesses: they go where the money is. And consumers have made it clear they're not going to tolerate being squeezed for every single fee they can get.
This doesn't mean you're always going to come in second. The little guy, as a group, holds a lot of money, and if interest rates go up, your money will become a lot more interesting to them. But for now, you might want to think about a credit union: after all, the only wealth managed by a credit union is that of its members.
5-7-2012
by Chris Martin
|
4-6-2012
by Dan Seitz
|
12-5-2011
by Neil Hayashi
|
News & Reviews • Latest from our Blog
|
04-06-2012
You’re a vegetarian. Everyone knows this. Yet every Christmas, grandma sends you a gift card to the Wild West Steakhouse or Crispy Chicken Rotisserie. Well, instead of filling another drawer with unwanted presents, you can now turn those gift cards into rewards points. According to MarketWatch, U. S. Bank and Plastic Jungle (an online secured gift card exchange) have partnered to allow FlexPerks Travel Rewards Visa Signature cardholders to swap...
|
|
04-05-2012
The 2012 Election season is about to go high tech: the swarms of cheery interns and fervent volunteers canvassing every neighborhood from sea to shining sea this year will now be able to get your monetary support with the simple swipe of a credit card. Intuit, Inc. recently announced that their popular GoPayment mobile credit card payment system has been revamped to accommodate political fundraising, which means dumping money into the nearest super...
|
|
04-03-2012
Watch out identity theives…there’s a new dynamic duo in town, and they’re out to fight fraud like never before. MarketWatch recently reported that AllClear ID, an award winning tech company specializing in identity theft protection, has partnered with the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA). The NCFTA includes all kinds of good guys fighting the good fight, pulling together everyone from law enforcement to security researchers....
|