Two years after completing its takeover of Merrill Lynch, Bank of America is refining its strategy to get banking products such as debt, liquidity and cash management to the clients of financial advisors.

“We’re at the epicenter of these two companies coming together,” says Laurie Krupa, who was named head of the banking unit of the global wealth and investment management operation late last year.  She reports to Sallie Krawcheck, president of New York-based globwl wealth and investment management, which had $2.238 trillion of total client assets as of Dec. 31.

In her new role, Krupa manages over 800 wealth management banking and credit specialists who partner with the more than 20,000 Merrill Lynch Financial advisors and U.S. Trust private client advisors to bring banking products to their clients.

Krupa said there are a few key aspects of global wealth and investment mangement. First is product management and development, which creates debt, liquidity and cash management products to meet the needs of the client base. Second is the group of specialist bankers that work with financial advisors in Bank of America’s various channels. There is also a group of underwriters that underwrite all the credit is extended by the banking unit.

Krupa became head of GWIM Banking after serving as the head of Wealth Management Banking within the GWIM Banking and Direct Investment division of GWIM. In that role she helped build the team of wealth management bankers that now serve financial advisors through GWIM Banking. She joined Bank of America in 2004 through the acquisition of FleetBoston Financial.

In 2010, more than 281,000 loan and deposit products were sold to customers who had an investment relationship with Merrill Lynch. Krupa says the combination of the advisors at Merrill Lynch and U.S.  
Trust with the banking expertise from Bank of America provides a unique value proposition for clients.

Merrill Lynch advisors generally are not credit specialists, Krupa noted. And part of the reasoning behind GWIM Banking is that they don’t have to be – the advisor can remain the point of contact for all dealings with the client but bring in a specialist if banking services are needed.

“We didn’t want to turn the Merrill advisors into bankers,” she said. Instead, the goal is to give the advisors the ability to provide banking solutions and advice to their client as a way to enhance the relationship.

U.S. Trust’s private client advisors often have a broader credit background than those at Merrill Lynch, but they can still use GWIM’s bankers for help with complex deals, or get banking products for clients through the unit.

Krupa stressed however, that GWIM isn’t operating in what she called “the age of cross-sell.” Instead “it really is about delivering the enterprise.” The advisors are not pushing banking products, she said, but rather responding to client needs.

As an example, she said, a Merrill Lynch advisor could work with a client who was a business owner. The advisor could have taken care of all that client’s personal needs, but now his or her business is looking for a line of credit. “It’s not like they’re looking to cross- sell a line of credit,” she said – the request comes from the client, and then the advisor can help set up that line with the help of a GWIM banker.

The operation was first created in late 2008. Last year the leadership team re-examined “the entire continuum of banking solutions” that were brought together with Merrill Lynch, U.S. Trust and Bank of America to see if new products needed to be developed, she said. In addition, the group looked at the various offerings among the three legacy companies to see if some products were being offered to one set of clients that might be worth offering to another.

For example, she said, “we have some really interesting structured lending capabilities that were historically only offered to the ultra- high-net worth clients,” through U.S. Trust, but as GWIM looked at its total client base they realized they could bring those capabilities to clients at Merrill Lynch as well.

This year, Krupa said,  “is our key year for integration,” and, “continuing to integrate banking into the way our advisors do business every day.”

A vital part of getting these products to clients is training the advisors about what exactly GWIM Banking offers and how they can use it.