How a family-owned regional firm won wealth-management market share against national brands

Challenge

A family-owned banking and wealth firm in the Upper Midwest — founded more than 50 years ago as a community bank — wanted to build its reputation as a wealth leader and shift how its regional market saw it. Its community-bank origins led many to underestimate the breadth and sophistication of its wealth and banking services, and it was competing for attention against larger, better-known national firms. Few in its home state recognized the strength of what it offered. The opportunity: lean into family-ownership as a differentiator and use it to win share among high-net-worth families and business owners.

Research & assessment

We evaluated the firm's offering and focused attention on high-net-worth families and business owners — the clients for whom its model was strongest. We worked closely with the firm's advisors to understand the needs they were actually meeting, then built messaging that emphasized the sophistication of its investment and banking services and its distinctive understanding of family businesses. Winning local share, we concluded, would require equipping the firm's many leaders with cohesive messaging and getting them in front of the right audiences.

Solutions

Drawing on relationships with investment and local media, we set out to build the firm's reputation across its state:

• Trained the firm’s professional leaders, then mobilized its local roster of advisors and bankers with well-defined messaging around the firm's family ownership, its model of serving the full banking and wealth needs of wealthy and business-owner clients, and its local-market focus.
• Secured interviews for the firm's CIO, investment professionals, and advisors with personal-finance and investing media.
• Created content supporting each core practice area — wealth management, private banking, commercial lending, and consumer banking.
• Built social profiles and content for key leaders, including the CEO, head of wealth, and CIO, and seeded the feeds with brand-building posts.
• Scheduled podcast interviews with both executive leadership and leading advisors.
• Managed communications around the divestiture of a non-core business line and a key executive departure.
• Identified speaking opportunities and prepared presenters to reinforce the firm's core messages.
• Elevated the firm's substantial community giving — millions of dollars in donations annually — as proof of its local commitment.

Results

We trained dozens of the firm's professionals to serve as spokespeople and thought leaders, and helped build a library of website content demonstrating its wealth and banking expertise. We secured numerous interviews across business and consumer personal-finance media, scheduled podcast appearances, and raised the profile of its financial professionals both locally and nationally.

The firm was ultimately ranked among the top investment firms in its state — alongside storied national financial institutions — and stands as the top family-owned wealth management firm in its market.

Outcome: A trusted local name, reframed into a sophisticated wealth competitor — ranked beside institutions many times its size.