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West Pointe Bank and Trust Co. is joining the wave of banks that offer customers a chance to buy and sell stocks.
By late this year, Belleville-based West Pointe expects to offer personal brokerage, insurance, mutual fund and annuity services through an affiliation with Raymond James Financial Services, a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based securities firm.
Most large banks have offered such products through separate subsidiaries, but the 1999 passage of banking reform in Congress cleared the way for community banks to follow suit.
The measure repealed parts of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, allowing banks, investment firms and insurance companies to sell one another's products and provide one-stop financial services shopping.
"Community banks fought for 20 years to be on a...