Idaho Trust Co., a Coeur dAlene-based investment-management company, has formed a nationally-chartered bank, called Wealthbank N.A., so that it can offer its estate-planning and trust services across the country, says company President Thomas Prohaska.


The new bankof which Idaho Trust will become a divisionalso is recruiting a nationwide network of attorneys, called the Wealth Advisor Network, to refer clients to Wealthbank, he says.


The first group of attorneys to join the network were in Coeur dAlene last week for training on the concept and on Wealthbanks products and services, Prohaska says.


Rather than setting up a bricks-and-mortar location in each state or in each city where we want to be, were creating a network of attorneys who refer clients to us, and provide the personal relationship on a local basis to that client, he says.


The idea for Wealthbank sprang from a story that ran in a publication called Lawyers Weekly USA about a year ago, Prohaska says.


That article, titled Estate Planning Lawyers Double Their Income by Becoming a Trust Company, detailed the process that Prohaska and his brother, Daniel, went through to close their estate-planning law practice and open Idaho Trust in 1994.


At the time, the brothers believed they could fill a niche for local estate-planning services, but as lawyers, were not able to provide all of the services their clients desired, Prohaska has said. Once they opened Idaho Trust Co., a state-chartered financial institution that had regulatory approval to operate in Idaho and Washington, they were able to perform investment management services in those states.


After the Lawyers Weekly article ran, more than 100 law firms around the country called Idaho Trust to express interest in doing the same thing, Prohaska says.


Idaho Trust came up with Wealthbank and the Wealth Advisor Network as a way to help attorneys offer enhanced estate-planning services without having to go to the trouble of getting into the trust-banking business themselves, he says.


(It) doesnt require them to go out and get a charter and go through all the regulatory and capital requirements, he says.


In return, the attorneys are compensated by Wealthbank in a way that doesnt run afoul of ethics requirements or bar association rules, Prohaska claims.


Attorneys also will be trained by Wealthbank to provide more estate-planning counseling than they currently might, a service that Prohaska has trademarked as Wealth Advisory Law.


The setup allows (attorneys) to have access to the services we provide, and gives them access in training and support in the practice of Wealth Advisory Law, he says.


Were going to service clients around the United States leveraging relationships the attorneys already have, Prohaska says.


Wealthbank hopes to have about 5,000 attorneys nationwide in its Wealth Advisor Network in five years, he says.


Most of those attorneys will be from small firms of one to 10 lawyers, he says.


Thats because those firms feel most keenly competition from giant accounting and financial companies, which employ squadrons of lawyers of their own and have siphoned off many estate-planning and trust-planning clients, he says.


We believe that by arming those attorneys with another service they can offer their clients, it will allow them to be more competitive against these non-lawyer competitors, he says.


Idaho Trust will continue serving clients in Idaho and Washington as a division of Wealthbank, Prohaska says.


Idaho Trust employs 13 people at its Coeur dAlene headquarters and in a branch office in Boise. Prohaska says the company will add more people to handle Wealthbank and the Wealth Advisors Network as those businesses grow.