National City is looking to organically and inorganically grow its asset management business, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

The Cleveland, Ohio-based bank's plans include potentially acquiring a small asset manager and leveraging its 1,200 bank branches and wholesaling to build its investment management business, Ted Parker, executive vice president of institutional asset management told Reuters.

The National City Investment Management Company (IMC) manages the Armada Funds. At the end of May, the 45 professionals at National City IMC managed $14.2 billion in assets for Armada.

National City is interested in acquiring firms managing in the neighborhood of $1 billion in assets, Parker told Reuters. An investment management acquisition would help to broaden the Armada Funds family product lineup, said Parker.

Armada's armada
Funds by Type	Number of Funds
Equity	11
Asset Allocation	3
Fixed Income	6
Tax-Free Bond	4
Money Market	7
Total	31
Source: Armada website

"It is an area that we are focused on and perhaps would engage outside assistance to help," Reuters reported Parker as saying. Parker gave kudos to Mellon Financial Corp. for its success in developing its asset management business.

The Armada Funds will soon experience a boost in assets because of National City's recent acquisition of Provident Bank. Provident owns the Riverfront Fund group, a six fund family with roughly $300 million in assets. Armada will fold in the six funds into its own family. For more on the integration of the funds, see Armada Takes on Riverfront Funds.

In other moves at National City, expect a new distribution head at Armada, someone who will "optimize what is available in our footprint through inside distribution," said Parker. "[W]e are under-leveraged both in our retail platform and in our wholesale banking channel as well," Parker told Reuters. "[W]e need to penetrate outside distribution" to provide the regional bank a national scope in retail sales," added Parker.

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