Dive Brief:
- Truist has entered the Chicago market with a 10-person team of wealth management professionals, according to a press release Tuesday.
- By breaking into the Windy City, Truist Wealth now serves nine of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the country.
- At the same time, PNC is also planning its geographic buildout. The firm announced in a press release last week it will restructure its private bank by adding two regions to better manage its expanded footprint in the West after acquiring the U.S. arm of Spanish lender BBVA last year.
Dive Insight:
Truist Wealth is bursting into the third-largest market in the U.S. for the first time, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm revealed Tuesday. The lender’s wealth management arm has opened an office in downtown Chicago, which now counts 10 employees.
"Disciplined expansion will help us achieve our strategic goals, and our Chicago team brings a combination of private banking, brokerage and trust experience that will help Truist Wealth expand and win in this market," Joseph Thompson, Truist’s chief wealth officer, said in a statement. "I'm confident the team's background, combined with our planning-centric service model and commitment to inspire and build better lives and communities, will position Truist Wealth for success."
The $544 billion-asset bank, formed in a 2019 merger between BB&T and SunTrust, will provide financial planning, investment management, banking and risk management solutions to high net worth individuals, families and business owners in Chicago.
PNC goes west
Truist is not the only big bank to scale out its footprint in recent times.
PNC’s acquisition of the U.S. arm of BBVA extended the reach of the Pittsburgh-based bank across the western portion of the country.
To account for that expansion, PNC is restructuring to add two new private-banking regions — West and Southwest/Mountain — on top of the bank’s five existing regions: Greater Pennsylvania, Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.
As part of the reorganization, PNC is promoting Jennifer Lee to oversee all seven of PNC’s private-bank regions in a new position: head of U.S. markets. Lee most recently served as regional managing director and executive vice president for the bank’s Northeast region, according to her LinkedIn profile.
“We believe these changes provide both the leadership and structure needed for PNC Private Bank to continue growing effectively across all of our markets on a national scale,” Don Heberle, head of PNC Private Bank, said in a statement. “We are confident this new organizational approach, coupled with Jennifer’s leadership, will allow us to further strengthen our existing client relationships and position us to serve future clients across the nation in a consistently exceptional way.”
