Private-banking firm wants to streamline trust-service admin. and delivery. Chicago-based PrivateBancorp has asked the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to approve its application to charter a special-purpose federal savings bank to help it consolidate and expand its trust and wealth-management business.

National scale

PrivateBancorp -- owner of PrivateBank-brand subsidiaries in Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin, the PrivateBank Mortgage Company and the PrivateWealth Group consisting of Chicago-based Wealth Management and Trust, Chicago-based Lodestar Investment Counsel and a Linsco/Private Ledger-affiliated private-client arm called PrivateWealth Financial Strategies -- expects to receive regulatory approval for its PrivateWealth Trust Company later this year.

With a nationally chartered trust company, PrivateBancorp plans to "consolidate most of its trust and wealth-management business [on] a single platform for streamlined management and related efficiencies," the company says in a press release. The new company also stands to streamline the company's trust-related compliance by putting the bulk of its trust business under the supervision of the OTS rather than multiple state-level trust regulators.

"Strategically, this decision is in keeping with our stated desire to continue to grow our wealth-management and trust businesses on a national scale," says Larry Richman, president and CEO of PrivateBancorp. "By creating this new subsidiary with a federal charter, we will gain a more flexible platform to deliver trust and wealth-management services nationally in ways that we believe will serve the best interests of our diverse client base." -FWR

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