A Conversation With ... Todd Larsen

Guaranty Bank, a subsidiary of QCR Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: QCRH), recently added a wealth management division. Why was this created?
Guaranty Bank is part of a multibank holding company, and it’s an addition we have with all of our charters. It’s been extremely successful with our other banks that are owned by the holding company. It’s been a key part of our strategic plan, and it was just time to launch it here in southwest Missouri.

What services are new?
We did not have any form of wealth management, whether it be a broker or a wealth management group, in the organization. So, we added a wealth management and trust services department. We are a fiduciary money manager, so we handle investments for individuals [and] organizations. We do financial planning [to] help people with their estate and tax questions, help them make sure they get the right advisers for that, and that they’re asking the right questions and partnering with their current advisers to help them just be more efficient.

What has the response been like in the first months of operating?
It’s always good when something’s new to have a lot of excitement and energy around it. It’s been very well received. We’ve been very, very busy meeting with a lot of our bank clients. These are clients that currently exist in both our retail and deposit sides, as well as our lending and private banking and treasury areas. To be honest, we’re busy every day meeting with those folks.

What services are most utilized so far?
I would say personal investment management, along with financial planning. [Clients include] individuals who have amassed a great deal of wealth and who are looking to make sure that it’s growing and protected at the same time. At the end of the day, people tend to trust people. It always circles back to the relationship that the client has with their trusted adviser, be it their attorney, their CPA or their wealth management and financial advisers. I think that’s always going to be key. I hope that never goes away.

Some $84 trillion is projected to be passed down from older Americans to millennial and Gen X heirs through 2045, according to The Wall Street Journal. How is the banking industry responding to that?
Well, it hasn’t happened quite yet. A big challenge for local and regional banks is to continue to build a relationship with the next generation who stand to inherit quite a bit of that money. And just making sure we’re doing a good job to get to know our clients’ families and beneficiaries, so that when it’s time to pass that, we know who they are and they know us. There’s been preparation for it for quite a long time, and I think many of our clients do have solid estate plans in place. We’ve got to work with them and their attorneys, and everything’s kind of set for it to happen.

You came to Guaranty Bank earlier this year from Quad City Bank & Trust, another company owned by QCR Holdings. What prompted that decision?
(Quad City Bank & Trust) was the first bank in the QCRH family and has a very robust wealth management department. They manage a little over $2.5 billion as an entity. As QCRH, we manage over $5.5 billion across all of our bank charters. As we were preparing to launch it here and the opportunity presented itself, it was a chance for me to take a step up and kind of line up a bigger challenge and do it within a company where I was very confident in the structure of the organization and people. I had a very good comfort level knowing the culture and the people involved, and so for me, it was kind of the perfect scenario.