Wealth Management is about performance and service: the kind of performance Charley Winger and his colleagues turn in year after year and the kind of service that made our Private Banking initiative successful.

Our new Wealth Management initiative expands on that success. While Private Banking is geared for individuals with significant personal wealth, Wealth Management is broader and includes AmSouth’s full range of investment, trust and retirement planning services aimed at all of our customers.

AmSouth’s plans include innovative products that give customers access to a broader variety of money managers and custom portfolios managed by some of the best minds in the business.

In addition, AmSouth is increasing its sales force, providing specialized attention to each of five types of target customers, ranging from an individual who wants an online brokerage account to a corporation that wants to provide a retirement plan for thousands of employees.

Among them are our brokerage service and 28 mutual funds as well as the personal trust services we’ve provided since 1915.

AmSouth ranks third among South-eastern regional banks both in trust assets under management and mutual fund assets.

The goal is ambitious: double the contribution from Wealth Management over the next three years, producing more than $100 million in annual, incremental pretax contributions by the end of the third year. The initiative will be driven by two key strengths: superior investment performance and superior client service.

These new approaches will build on the success we are already seeing. For example, the Capital Growth Fund wasn’t the only top performer last year: the Small Cap Fund, the Bond Fund and the Balanced Fund, outperformed at least 90 percent of their rivals in 2000.

AmSouth bankers are recognized as trusted advisors who can handle every aspect of a client’s finances. That’s because AmSouth people like Charley Winger are focused on results.