Wells Fargo Private Bank, a unit of
Wells Fargo & Co. today said that it has expanded its Elder Services program to the East Coast through its acquisition of Wachovia Securities LLC. The bank says it plans to continue to expand the business there.
The program, offered to clients with at least $1 million in investible assets, helps aging clients not only with investments but with health care challenges and quality-of-life issues. The bank arranges health care appointments and assists with taxes and even moving into nursing homes, when necessary. It acts as a resource to clients when children or other relatives are not available to help.
Clients are charged 2% on a minimum of $1 million in assets; less if assets are more substantial.
“We expect the need for Elder Services to triple over the next two decades, which makes our presence in the East so crucial,” Keith Klovee-Smith, national manager of the program, said in a release. The bank has been providing its elder-care services since 1997.
Wells is not the only bank that is in the elder-care business.
Harris Private Bank has been offering its enCircle service for high-net-worth clients and their children since September 2008.
“Our private-banking clients had a need,” Terry Jenkins, president and chief executive of Harris Private Bank, said in a recent interview. “We saw them struggling with a whole realm of issues, from the basics of paying bills and balancing bank accounts, all the way through to managing investments.”
Mr. Jenkins declined to provide details about how fast or how much enCircle has grown, but he said that it has exceeded his growth expectations. Harris charges 30 basis points on top of the usual asset management fee, with a minimum of $3,000 (on a $1 million minimum) and a maximum of $9,000 a year.
Smaller advisers also often get involved in the elder-care business as their clients age.
For example, Robert Abbott, principal of Harvest Capital Advisors Inc., which has about $155 million in assets under management, realized he had to step in to help two elderly clients, a married couple, who were rapidly losing their health and their faculties. Mr. Abbott faced the possibility that his clients could spend the last of their cash — and their last years in misery.
“It became a matter of, ‘For God's sake, someone has got to take care of these people!” he said. “They're sweet people, and they're now incapable of handling their own affairs.”
So Mr. Abbott, working with his chief bond trader, Lynette Johnson, who just happened to have a background in geriatric nursing, set up a living
trust for the couple to protect their assets for themselves and their daughter. They found a suitable assisted-living facility, moved the couple, fixed up and sold the old home, and put the proceeds from the sale in the
trust.
That was five years ago, and since then, Harvest Capital has continued to specialize in the area of elder care, helping more and more clients. Indeed, Ms. Johnson divides her time between trading bonds and helping aging clients.
