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Boston Private has closed two of its wealth management offices in Madison, Wisconsin and Naples, Florida.

The closures come as new Boston Private President and CEO Anthony DeChellis continues to take a hard look at the bank’s strategy, and as the bank reported $963 million in negative net flows in the wealth management business between Boston Private and its affiliate partners.

Of that number, Dechellis said $350 million was related to the branch closings, while the rest is mainly from client outflows.

“The offices were non-strategic … where literally we had a person or at most a person and an assistant,” DeChellis said on a recent earnings call.

The $963 million in net flows is the most net flows from assets under management that Boston Private has had in the last five quarters. Total assets under management at the end of the first quarter were roughly $16.1 billion, down about $590 million from the first quarter of 2018.

Even before DeChellis came on, Boston Private had been taking steps to restructure its wealth management operations to focus more on its Boston Private brand and reduce some of its wealth management subsidiaries.

The company sold its stake in in San Francisco-based Bingham, Osborn & Scarborough in October 2018. It made a similar move at the end of 2017 when it sold its entire ownership stake in Boston-based Anchor Capital Advisors, another of its wealth management subsidiaries that manages over $9 billion in assets.

Since coming aboard at the beginning of the year, DeChellis has made it clear that he is open to changes of Boston Private’s overall strategy and has almost completely restructured senior management.

Boston Private’s parent company reported net income of $19.4 million in the first quarter of 2019, down $3.3 million from the first quarter of 2018. Net interest income for the quarter was $58.3 million, up about $900,000 from the first quarter of 2018. The margin remained flat at 2.9 percent.

Total assets reached $8.57 billion at the end of the quarter, up more than $250 million year-over-year. Total loans reached $6.9 billion at the end of the quarter, up more than $320 million year-over-year, led by increases in most categories offset by some decreases in commercial real estate loans, home equity and consumer loans.

The company had a provision credit of $1.4 million for the first quarter of 2019, primarily driven by a decline in criticized loans. The allowance for loan losses as a percentage of total loans was 1.07 percent in the first quarter, down slightly from one year ago.

Boston Private Closes Wealth Management Offices in Florida and Wisconsin

by Bram Berkowitz time to read: 2 min
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