Citizens Financial Group has brought on two JPMorgan Chase executives and opened its first private banking office as part of a strategy it debuted last fall to expand wealth management and private banking services.
The Providence, Rhode Island-based bank has hired Michael Cherny as head of wealth management advisors and Tom Metzger as head of private wealth managers. Both executives came from JPMorgan and in their newly created roles will lead Citizens’ private bank, which launched in October. Citizens also planted a private bank flag in Boston to cater to ultra-high net worth clients and family offices, with plans to open several more offices later this year in Florida and California.
The expansion marks Citizens’ latest play to reel in business from clients of failed regional banks that had major wealth management operations.
“With the bank failures of 2023, it is clear that significant white space exists in the market for a new entrant to fill by delivering best-in-market customer service for private banking and wealth management clients,” Citizen’s head of consumer banking, Brendan Coughlin, said in a prepared statement on Thursday.
Citizens Private Bank had drawn in $1.2 billion of deposits by the end of 2023, 30% of which are non-interest-bearing, the bank said in its fourth-quarter earnings report. Some 75% of those deposits are from commercial clients.
The $220 billion-asset-bank said Cherny, a 30-year JPMorgan veteran, is responsible for growing Citizens’ “mass affluent and affluent” client relationships across the country. In his previous role at JPMorgan, Cherny led consumer banking and wealth management in New York, one of that company’s largest regions consisting of $60 billion of investment and deposit balances, Citizens said.
Metzger joined Citizens after leading wealth management recruiting at First Republic Bank, which failed in May and was acquired by JPMorgan.The new head of wealth managers will recruit and lead private wealth managers focused on new-to-bank clients in “key geographies,” Citizens said.
Citizens Bank reduced its workforce by 3.5% in the fourth quarter
Cherny and Metzger’s appointments come after Citizens’ addition of about 200 bankers to the private bank last year, at least 50 of whom were hired from San Francisco-based First Republic Bank when its failure. Citizens noted in its recent expansion announcement that its private wealth offices would offer freshly baked cookies and branded umbrellas, a perk that First Republic Bank was known for before its collapse.
Citizens first previewed its private bank game plan at an industry conference in September, naming the strategy as one of its top priorities after its acquisition of two wealth management firms in 2018 and 2022.
“We’ve made no secret about our desire to continue to grow our wealth management franchise over the last few years,” Coughlin said in the September presentation. “We aim to bring together the breadth of the bank … to the client in a single, integrated client experience.”
Banks have been working to enhance their wealth management offerings as demand for “one-stop shops” of financial services mounts, according to a McKinsey report last month.
Coughlin added in September that 2023 was a “year of investment” for the bank and that the private banking strategy would allow it to “play with the big boys over time.”
“One thing that differentiates really large banks with midsize community banks is often the presence of a well-run private bank,” Coughlin said in September. “We believe this move is very strategic for us in a lot of different ways.”