PrimeVest Financial Services, an ING Group NV unit that provides third-party brokerage services exclusively for banks and credit unions, plans to offer balance-sheet management and trust services.
"We want to create a wide shelf" of investment products and services, said Catherine Bonneau, the chief operating officer of PrimeVest, who will become its president April 1.
The St. Cloud, Minn., third-party marketing unit distributes products such as mutual funds, annuities, and insurance through nearly 2,000 reps. Those reps are dual employees of PrimeVest and its roughly 500 financial institution partners. Last year the unit added 60 financial institutions as clients.
PrimeVest's new initiatives are in their early stages, Ms. Bonneau said; some should be rolled out as early as this year, and others will be offered within the next three years.
In balance-sheet management, PrimeVest plans to help its banking clients gather deposits. For example, it will help them market certificates of deposit and other deposit products outside their geographic area, according to Ms. Bonneau.
Another way that PrimeVest will help banks generate deposits on the books is through sweep programs, in which the cash portion of customers' investment brokerage accounts is swept temporarily into savings accounts insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
PrimeVest is working through the legal disclosure process for the initiatives and expects to make them available later this year, Ms. Bonneau said.
Analysts said sweep programs are popular with banks' commercial customers.
Other companies have developed relationships by offering such programs to banks. For example, Reserve Inc., a New York cash management firm, generated $4 bilion of assets under management and new banking customers last year by offering cash sweep products to banks and credit unions.
Initiatives focusing on trust departments are also in the works at PrimeVest, Ms. Bonneau said. Banks want to figure out ways to "create a more collaborative environment between their brokerage program and their trust department."
The challenge is when customers of banks' retail brokerage units amass enough wealth to graduate to the trust area, where the client tends to require an enhanced level of investment products and services.
PrimeVest will act as a consultant to help banks create a "holistic approach," Ms. Bonneau said. It also plans to offer consulting services to financial institutions that are re-evaluating whether they should keep or enhance their trust business.
In addition, the broker-dealer plans to expand trust departments' use of its execution business to buy and sell securities, she said. "That's not something PrimeVest has traditionally done a great deal with."
The unit also is seeking to leverage the trust powers of a sister company, ING Trust USA. Nearly two-thirds of PrimeVest's financial institution clients have their own trust companies.
PrimeVest offers a service in which a bank representative, paired with an off-site ING trust officer, serves as the relationship manager for the bank's trust clients.
Between 15 and 20 banks are already using the service, Ms. Bonneau said.
"The client gets the benefit of that local face who knows them and their family and their needs, along with the benefit of professional trust management and administration," she said
As the president of PrimeVest, Ms. Bonneau will succeed Randall Ciccati, who will remain PrimeVest's chief executive officer and the head of advisory services for ING Advisors Network, the El Segundo, Calif., broker-dealer division whose units include PrimeVest. He will become the president of ING Advisors Network on April 1.
In that role, Mr. Ciccati will succeed Valerie Brown, who will become vice president of wealth management and annuities for ING U.S. Financial Services. She will succeed John Simmers, who will remain the CEO of ING U.S. Financial Services.
Ms. Bonneau was promoted to chief operating officer of PrimeVest in February 2006. Previosly, she was president of ING Trust USA, which she led for seven years.
Before joining PrimeVest, Ms. Bonneau was the president and CEO of ING National Trust. She has also held financial management positions at Citibank, Bank of New York Co., and BankBoston.
