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GRAND RAPIDS - Northern Trust Bank West Michigan is not your typical bank.
It's a bank in that it makes loans, has deposit accounts and operates branches, but its major focus is trust and investment services.
"The typical bank is primarily a bank and, typically, less than 15 percent of its revenue would come from trust and investment management," said James McKay, chairman and marketing director of the West Michigan office.
Atypically, this $40 billion, Chicago-based bank derives 78 percent of its revenue from the investment world.
Eight trust and investment management veterans formed the original staff that opened the office here in February 1999. At the time the office wasn't officially a bank; it just had trust powers. it opened as a bank in December of the same year.
Northern Trust normally opens a new office with three or four people to start, McKay recalled, but the company made a big commitment in the case of Grand Rapids, "and they made it based on the fact that we sold them on the idea that we could be very successful here," McKay said.
Since then office staff has grown from its original team of eight to 16. In conjunction, it recently doubled its office space, expanding from 4,000 to 8,000 square feet in the Waters Building on Ottawa Avenue downtown.
The company's banking branch occupies an additional 2,500 square feet in the same building.
Since its founding in 1889 as Chicago Bank, Northern Trust has maintained concentration on trust and investment services in two core markets: the personal financial services market and the corporate and institutional services market.
Of Northern Trust Corp.'s 82 personal financial services offices in...