Wealth manager founds bank to serve needs of HNW clients, small businesses. Keller Financial Group's First Foundation Bank opened for business in southern California earlier this month. Keller says it founded the bank to give its wealth-management clients a friendly and convenient place to do their banking.

Responsive

"Our clients want a bank where someone knows who they are, what they need and can make decisions quickly," says First Foundation's CEO Scott Kavanaugh. "If our clients want to borrow money to buy a company or an investment property, they expect a quick response."

Keller's clients are unlikely to get that kind of service from "larger out-of-state banks," according to Kavanaugh.

Industry consolidation reduced the number of California banks from 482 in 1990 to 274 in 2005.

First Foundation is set up to work for business owners, small businesses and "mass-affluent" and high-net-worth individuals. Its loans are mostly business lines of credit, lending in support of commercial owner-user real estate, commercial investment and multi-family properties.

Directors and officers of Keller own 56% of the bank's holding company. Most other investors are clients of its subsidiary Keller Group Investment Management.

Keller manages more than $1.2 billion for about 900 high-net-worth clients in and around its base in Irvine, Calif. First Foundation is also based in Irvine. -FWR

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