Allocation Plan at National City Targets Tomorrow's Rich

National City Corp. is trying to appeal to the "almost wealthy" with a diversified investment product it inherited from Integra Financial Corp.

Called FutureQuest, the new asset allocation program uses in-house mutual funds as well as several funds managed by SEI Corp. of Wayne, Pa.

Previously the Cleveland-based company offered asset allocation products, which spread assets among various investments, only to its wealthier trust clients.

FutureQuest requires a $25,000 minimum investment.

The target audience is made up of current private clients who are relatively young and not yet ready for estate and trust planning.

"But they have the dollars to invest," said M. Kathleen Harrison, a National City vice president and product manager in its asset management group. "We really want to capture that."

National City, which acquired Pittsburgh-based Integra in May, will not set up a trust or investment management account with less than $500,000.

Asset allocation is a great way to attract customers who are not rich, but need the investment advice not typically available at a mutual fund supermarket, observers said.

"That's where banks can leverage their expertise. Everybody can do asset allocation, but banks are giving you advice," said Shirley Sing-Masuyama, an associate at Financial Institutions Consulting, New York.

FutureQuest was designed for Integra by asset manager SEI, which recently reshaped the program to fit National City's larger size and broader geographic reach.

Ms. Harrison said National City had its own plans to design a similar product, but liked what it saw in FutureQuest, including the availability of SEI's global mutual funds.

FutureQuest was launched July 1. Since then, the bank has been training 400 account managers in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.

"This allows us to be the gatekeeper. We want to have a single point of contact," Ms. Harrison said.

FutureQuest uses five asset allocation models, which draw on National City's 15 proprietary Armada mutual funds as well as several SEI funds.

Along with FutureQuest, National City picked up four former Integra mutual funds - a tax-free municipal bond, a money market, and two fixed- income funds - which raised mutual fund assets managed by the bank to to $4.7 billion.

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