Six years after acquiring a small Atlanta money manager to establish a foothold in Georgia, BNY Mellon Wealth Management is adding staff in the state to take advantage of a surge of wealthy individuals who reside in the southeast.

The unit has hired two portfolio managers in the past two months in Georgia and is looking to add a senior portfolio manager. In the past three years, it has more than doubled the size of its sales staff in Atlanta as it continues to increase its focus on the region.

“We are definitely in a hiring mode right now,” said Dana Halberg, who was promoted Thursday to chairman of BNY Mellon Wealth Management in Georgia.

BNY Mellon Wealth Management, a unit of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., has 35 employees in its Atlanta office, and Halberg expects to have between 40 and 42 within the next year.

Susan Rivers, a spokeswoman for BNY Mellon Wealth Management, said it plans to add another managing director for sales for Georgia by the end of this year, after hiring a sales officer early this year.
Analysts said that Georgia—and more specifically Atlanta—has become an attractive region for wealth individuals.

Burton Greenwald of Philadelphia’s BJ Greenwald Associates said the high-net-worth population in Atlanta has increased “five or six times over” in the past 10 years. He said that this makes Atlanta a natural growth area for Bank of New York Mellon to consider.

“BNY Mellon has historical been a northeast focused organization,” Greenwald said. “It is logical to look at Atlanta and the southeast, but I expect further national growth for them given their resources. They have a large wealth management from the legacy Mellon side and Dreyfus.”

Mellon Financial Corp., which merged with Bank of New York in 2007, entered Georgia in 2003 when it bought Arden Group, which managed $750 million of assets at the time it was acquired. In 2005, it bought City Capital Inc., an Atlanta wealth manager that managed $800 million of assets at the time for high-net-worth individuals and institutional clients, including endowments and private foundations.

Halberg, who worked for Arden and was a wealth strategist for BNY Mellon Wealth Management before being promoted Thursday, said BNY Mellon Asset Management now has more than $2.75 billion of assets under management in Georgia and she expects further growth as the company continues to hire.

BNY Mellon Wealth Management is among the 10 largest wealth managers nationally with about $151 billion in assets under management, but it isn’t the only banking company that is looking to develop its wealth management presence in Georgia.

In November, Wilmington Trust announced it hired three advisers in Atlanta to expand its wealth advisory services business in the Southeast. Two of the executives it hired, D. Jack Sawyer Jr. and Michael A. Mohr, were founding principal of the Arden Group.

Halberg said BNY Mellon Wealth Management would continue to target wealthy individuals in Georgia with more than $1.25 million in investable assets. She said the average customer has about $5 million.

“There was this big sign on Peachtree Street 30 years ago that used to talk about the population here and I am telling you it has grown by five times since then,” she said. “It will be very interesting to see where things are at in 30 years. There is just huge growth in Atlanta. We are seeing businesses relocating here and a lot of wealthy business owners and professionals are following it.”