Take a drive around the North Shore and you’ll see a bank on just about every corner. What you might not see are branches of California-based Wells Fargo Bank, but that doesn’t mean North Shore residents can’t benefit from Wells Fargo Private Bank investment and credit services.

Wells Fargo opened its first investment office to serve the North Shore in Northbrook in 2016. At the time, Senior Vice President and Wealth Advisor Colleen McCaffrey told Sheridan Road, “Chicago is a priority ‘high growth’ market for the Wells Fargo Private Banking footprint. Our plan from day one was to build out a strong base of operations at our downtown location and then expand in the north suburbs.”

Since then, the bank has expanded its presence in the North Shore by offering a suite of investment and wealth management services. In addition, the bank has increased its credit options by offering strategies to help clients optimize cash flow, increase tax efficiencies, finance purchases of real estate and other assets, manage investment allocations, and realize their estate financial planning goals.

Frank Carbonara, Senior Vice President and Regional Private Banking Manager, leads a team of Private Bankers for Wells Fargo’s Private Bank in Illinois. Frank and his team provide credit strategies that are customized for each client, which can play an important role in their client’s wealth management plans. Carbonara says the foundation for providing quality service in the Chicago market is the bank’s “team” approach to building trust and relationships with clients.

“Getting to know a client through a discovery process and understanding their short-term and long-term financial needs and goals, is key to the foundation we build with our clients,” Carbonara says. “We want to understand what’s truly most important to them and their families, and provide resources and solutions to help them.”

Whether it’s financing a deal, offering investment opportunities, or helping clients think through their estate planning, it’s all rooted in Wells Fargo Private Bank’s underlying philosophy of building trust with clients, and the bank’s relationship managers’ goal of becoming a trusted advisors.

“In order to have the tough conversations there needs to be a comfort level in place,” says Lisa Bertagna, Senior Vice President and Senior Private Banker/Market Leader for Wells Fargo’s North Shore market. “Once the conversation flows freely we can go from need to need and watch how the simple act of unlocking one door can lead to opening another door to another goal.”

And once clients start working with Wells Fargo, the bank stays with them throughout the journey.

“Our customers appreciate having a series of benchmarks we can look at from month to month that can show them they’re on the right track,” Bertagna adds. “For most people, that provides so much comfort.”

Wells Fargo Private Bank, 400 Skokie Boulevard, Suite 510, in Northbrook, 312-592-5658, wellsfargo.com.