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Jason Warren, an assistant vice president/private banking at Bank of the Ozarks.

A key component of practice management is making sure that a physician's personal finances are taken care of.

And even though each bank seems to have a different title for the person assigned to the task, it's usually a personal or private banker who monitors the purse strings.

"Our physician … clients … are very, very busy," said Jason Warren, an assistant vice president/private banking at Bank of the Ozarks. "Their time is stretched pretty thin, so what we do is provide them a level of service that they want and need. They also have quite a bit of assets."

They may also be one of the best customers at any bank using all of its different services

"Exactly," said Patricia Johnson, a vice president at U.S. Bank in North Little Rock. "We have clients who might use all of our services. They might run the gamut of everything we do. But everything starts with me, I am their banker."

Johnson detailed the process.

"The first thing I do is profile the client," she said. "Tax returns, financial statements, and that is a wealth of information that lets me take a snapshot of where they are standing."

One thing that Johnson can't do is offer investment advice due to new federal regulations.

For that, she said, "I have a partner, Larry Cathey, who handles our investments, and, then … Amy Wren … does our trusts and estate planning. But that just might be for review, to see if they have one in place. If they don't, we'll definitely strongly suggest it."

The idea, according to Warren, is almost one-stop shopping.

"I am their one point of contact," he said. "I have clients who might spend part of their time in Little Rock, part of their time in Florida and part of their time in New York. But they know that if they need something, all they have to do is call me. They have my work number, my cell number, my home number, and they can call me at any time."

And for good reason, Warren said his bank runs on the 20/80 rule.

"Eighty percent of our business is going to come from 20 percent of our clients," he said.

Warren added that Bank of the Ozarks is a $2.4 billion bank, so using that figure and the 20/80 rule, almost $2 billion of the bank's assets comes from just 20 percent of its customers.



In Practice

While Warren couldn't get into specifics, he did detail in general how one of his clients, who is a physician, works.

"I'm working right now with an orthopedic surgeon," he said. "I am his one point of contact with the bank. If he wants to get a house, his daughter wants money transferred into her account, all the way up to what he's going to do with his IRA and moving CDs, we take care of them through our trust department.

"This gentleman, for instance, he'll call me and say 'OK, this is the mortgage I'm looking to do. I'll look at the financials and I'll take care of everything, from going to the mortgage person to closing … so that he is not making five different calls."

Warren used a sports analogy to describe how the private client bankers work: "We are the quarterback; we call all the plays."

Sometimes, it is like the proverbial audible though, and bankers like Warren might leave the office. "We do a lot of what we call 'field visits'," Warren said, "where the paperwork is taken to the client for signatures. That kind of service is typical for the people who use private banking.

"I have access to our lease division," Johnson said. "I have access to our corporate banking, everything, the whole gamut … that's one good thing about private banking. So much of that personal aspect is in-house. Even our mortgages are in-house, that's a huge plus for the client."



Getting Started

It takes time, said Johnson, whose husband, Carl, is a Little Rock physician, when someone new gets a private banker.

"One of things they look for is someone willing to sit down, talk with them and give them one-on-one attention. I have to earn that trust, so a one-on-one meeting is very important for that," she said.

But the key is finding the time.

"Physicians don't have time; they never have any time," she said. "They barely have time for lunch, so I try to slip in then and try to work out the details so that I can help them. I really do try to make it extremely easy for them."

It isn't just the established physicians either. New doctors, dubbed the "merging affluent" in the financial world, are also coveted.

"The doctors who are graduating, we want to make sure that they are taken care of as they are starting their practices," Warren said. "They would be the ones who could need the most from the bank with home mortgages and commercial loans."

But that isn't to say already established customers are ignored.

"The people who are already set," Warren said. "They do have children and they tend to follow in their parents' footsteps."

Warren also pointed out that those who use private banking are all over Arkansas.

"Every market, in the state of Arkansas has private bank customers," he said. "Some of the highest net-worth individuals in the world are in Arkansas."

And often times, in the smaller towns, those people are the local physicians.



January 2007

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