Institutional trust-service provider Reliance Trust has teamed up with a local venture firm and a local insurance agency to form Reliance Asset Advisors (RAA) with a view to providing trust, asset-management and other financial services to high-net-worth clients in and around Wilmington, N.C.

Reliance's partners in RAA are Harold Wells of Wells Insurance and start-up funder Mort Neblett of Owencroft Financial Partners. Both firms are based in Wilmington. 

"The formation of [RAA] is the manifestation of Reliance Trust`s long stated strategy of developing a direct retail presence in key Coastal markets throughout the Southeast," says Reliance Trust president  Anthony Guthrie. "We believe that markets such as Wilmington are currently underserved and present a great opportunity for Reliance, which is big enough to provide all the needed products and services and small enough to provide the kind of personal service that clients want and demand."

Early in 2007, Reliance inked a deal to function as a directed trustee for trusts formed for the benefit of end clients served by independent brokers affiliated with Raleigh, N.C.-based Capital Investment Companies. Around the same time, Reliance Trust's securities affiliate Reliance Financial opened an office in Waynesville, N.C. -- a popular summer retreat for the well-to-do in the Smoky Mountains -- and hired former Merrill Lynch broker Rob Middlemas to run it.

Atlanta-based Reliance says it is the largest independent trust company in the U.S. It has more than $65 billion under managementand does business in all 50 states..