Wachovia rolls out savings seminars

Wachovia Corp. began rolling out a series of educational savings seminars to its corporate customers and employees this week. The seminars are part of a campaign designed to boost savings among consumers and, indirectly, to grow the bank's business.

The bank is conducting 97 seminars this week at 60 companies. Wachovia has teamed with America Saves, a marketing campaign managed by the Consumer Federation of America, and it chose this week to launch the seminars because it's "America Saves Week."

Last year, the bank conducted a survey of consumer attitudes toward savings with the Consumer Federation of America. Charlotte-based Wachovia (NYSE:WB) also collaborated with the nonprofit on the seminars, which provide strategies and tools on how ordinary people can generate $1 million in savings.

Of course, increased savings among Wachovia customers is good for the bank, which can sell a variety of products and services to those consumers as they try to put away more money. The bank also recently launched an automatic savings program, Way2Save, which it is promoting heavily.

"This is going to help Wachovia build its business," Steve Brobeck, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America, said Thursday at a savings seminar for Wachovia employees in the Two Wachovia tower in uptown Charlotte.

Through the company's Wachovia at Work program, which caters to corporate clients, the bank also has conducted seminars this week in states such as New Jersey, Florida and South Carolina.

Bonnie Carlson, director of Wachovia at Work, says those seminars will run through the rest of the year. She says the bank is careful not to push its own products at the seminars, but it does make Wachovia bankers available to speak with customers one-on-one at the end of presentations.

Carlson says she has received positive feedback this week on the seminars, which demonstrate how individuals with various financial profiles can begin to save more aggressively.

"To know that they're not too late (to begin saving) has really had an impact," she says.