Dollars & Sense: Using a private banker

There may come a time when all your finances are just too much for you to handle. 
That’s when you may want to think about the services of a private banker.      

For most of us, a checking and savings account might be enough to take care of our everyday banking needs.  But for some, it becomes more complicated – and that’s when you might want to think about a private banker.

"Private banking is typically defined as providing the highest level of personalized services, professional guidance and customized products for the high net worth individuals.  So in addition to your normal deposit and loan products, we touch on things like investment and management and financial and estate planning," said Gary Thompson of Central Pacific Bank.

Who would be a good candidate for private banking?

"Private banking is for long term relationships, but the requirements when you put a dollar amount on it, there’s a dollar limit regarding income net worth and liquid or investment assets.  So like your income typically is like $150,000, your net worth might be like a million dollars, and your liquid or investable assets might be worth $500,000," Thompson says.

Thompson refers to a private banker as a "financial concierge."

"In a financial sense, these clients have, private banking clients have more complex needs, so there’s a higher level of service and anything the client needs done, the private banker can help with that.  So we have certain expertises that we do – if it’s outside of our area of expertise, we bring in experts in that field to assist us," he says.

That’s not to say you couldn’t handle these financial situations yourself – BUT -

"People are busy running their companies, doing their things so rather than them have to do the research the running around, they call us.  We do the research, we check with all the experts, we do all the ground work and then we basically come back to them with, here’s option A, option B and it makes it a lot easier for them," Thompson says.

There may be some fees involved, but Thompson says a lot of that depends of the long term relationship with the bank – and the amount of the investment.