The expansion supports a shift in business strategy to help commercial and mid-market clients, Suzanne Copeland, the chief marketing officer of Provident Bank, said in a telephone interview.
While the program launched in 1998 with a predecessor of LPL Financial as its broker-dealer, it was never a focus for the thrift institution. But now the bank seeks to make wealth management “an important core business line and not just a tertiary line,” Copeland said.
The bank did not disclose its assets under management or other financial information as the program in its newly incarnated form was still very new. “It’s too early to discuss the numbers,” Copeland said.
The bank, however, has bumped up its wealth management staff, more than doubling the team since July 2012. The bank hired a sales manager to build the retail wealth management program and manage the staff of financial consultants and wealth advisors. It also added four senior-level wealth advisors to its long-time team of four financial consultants. The most recent hire was John Lynch, a former Wells Fargo senior private banker who joined the team as a senior financial consultant to help commercial clients and those with more complex needs in the lower Hudson Valley. Three others were hired to help clients with sophisticated wealth management needs in other key markets, including the New York City metro area.
The new additions to the team will allow the bank to provide broader line of services than before, Copeland said.
Under a new agreement with LPL, advisors will be employees of both the bank and LPL, which will better support the bank’s new team-based selling model, according to Copeland. The program was previously fully managed, meaning advisors were employees of LPL.
“We have designed our wealth management services platform to provide dedicated service delivery to the unique segments of our client base,” said David Bagatelle, New York Metro market president and co-leader of wealth management services, said in a statement.
Provident Bank operates in some 35 offices in New York’s Hudson Valley region and another in New Jersey operating as PBNY Bank. It has $3.8 billion in assets.
