Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

FAs have a hard time with the toxic Wells Fargo brand. It's that basic. This is why PCG branches are moving to FiNet, to get rid of the Wells Fargo name above the door.

Your broker roster is why your efficiency ratio is so low. Wealth is a slowing dying service industry, and Wells already isn’t great at it and behind the curve compared to peers. I hope you get what you want and get sold somewhere better.

Post ID: @agj+1hNw3OAM

There’s always one halfwit (probably you) who says that. Then please explain to the audience why Wells Fargo is continuing to offer top-of-the-market recruiting packages in an effort to regrow it’s broker roster.

Having said that, most of us pray that we are sold to a competent brokerage not affiliated with a scandal-ridden bank who can’t get themselves right with the regulators 6 years after the news broke.

“ The bank can not survive without assets to manage.”

Lol what? The dregs of WIM is a nice to have for some for a bank with this balance sheet. If any of the five core businesses groups were to be axed entirely, there is no question it would be WIM. Look no further than the WIM efficiency ratio that hovers around 80.

@qya. I’d say he was all style and no substance but he has neither. 😂

Whoever bought whatever line he fed them should be fired…out of a cannon.

I strongly doubt that most FA's or even the whole LOB will be here at this time next year.

Charlie is all hat and no cattle.

Post ID: @vyr+1hNw3OAM

Okay. Get specific with the “tons of upgrades for FAs and clients” you are seeing. I’m interested to hear what you are experiencing on your end. I sure hope you aren’t referring to our new exciting credit cards.

I’ve worked very closely with our FA’s for the past 20 years. On my end I see “upgrades” that end up being downgrades because WFC cheaped- out and bought them straight from the vendor with zero personalization. I see systems that don’t talk to each other, system “enhancements” that might look more slick on the front-end but are still 1980s technology on the back-end, we have been begging for certain improvements to the most basic of functions for more than 10 years. Our division is currently hiring low-wage workers to manually replicate a fairly simple service which other online trading firms have been providing automatically for years, but our technology literally is incapable of handling it, so we have to hire people to do it manually in the background.

We are being pinned down right now to come up with aspects of our job which can be offshored even when that results in less accuracy or service to our clients and FA’s. And most importantly: less security/protection to our client’s personal information.

Our FA’s now go outside the bank for the advise and direction of other firm’s analysts and economists since WFII has been d-mbed-down and sanitized by leadership, but I’m sure you knew that.

The company line you used: “ A lot of those FAs lost include retirements and low producers” is the same corporate bs they’ve been spewing since we were at 17,000 FAs. It is a partial truth used to disguise real problems resulting from the loss of reputation, outdated technology, and the loss of talent and experience required to properly service the FAs. Tell that to Jason Howard who left this year with a $1 Billion in client assets, Larry Boggs who left with $1 Billion in assets, Lawrence and Lloyd Gazer’s team who walked out with $4 Billion in client assets. I can go on. WFC now has to pay the highest upfront packages in the industry in an attempt to lure over new FAs; and once they get here they get hit with the reality of all the WFC roadblocks to their business, our lack of capabilities, our incompetencies, our lack of services, our non user-friendly systems, our inability to service their foreign clients, the difficulties in getting answers to their questions, our lack of flexibility, etc

There are the Kool-aid drinkers who believe the nonsense leadership says, and then there is the reality of what is actually happening in the background.

With the finalization of IRT divestiture and WFAM divestiture, would that also attribute to some of the drop in assets?

Dropping 5% net in FA headcount year-over-year is brutal...wowsa.

Time to put out the deck chairs friends.

The S&P is down 20%. Being down 14% seems right. And I question how involved you are in WIM because there are a ton of upgrades happening for FAs and clients. Attrition is slowing and recruiting is picking up. A lot of those FAs lost include retirements and low producers. It's a big ship but seems to be making a turn, just takes time.

“We are building out capabilities across all the dimensions from the investment capabilities to the banking capabilities, our lending capabilities, offering trust in the other areas of distribution that didn’t have access to those in the past,” Scharf said. “It’s an offering across all of our product sets directed in a much more segmented way than we’ve ever done in the past.”

Hilarious. This statement by Scharf is scripted bs jargon at it’s best, and pure lies at it’s worst. I work in wealth management and am only seeing cost-cutting, off-shoring, minimization, depersonalization and reduction of services, selling off of business lines our customers need/want, alienation of clients and financial advisor, zero improvements to our systems, inability to meet regulatory requirements.

Charlie Scharf is not “building out” anything.

And btw - our inability to retain existing FAs or attract new FAs, resulting in a 14% loss of assets in one year’s time is a big deal. The bank can not survive without assets to manage.

Profits rose for Wells Fargo’s wealth management division in the second quarter of 2022, but the company saw advisor headcount and client assets fall.
The San Francisco-headquartered bank reported $603 million in net income from its Wealth and Investment Management arm, representing a 30% year-over-year increase, according to its July 15 earnings release.
Executives speaking on Wells Fargo’s earnings call on July 15 attributed the growth in net income to an increase in interest rates and loan balances.
“Revenue declined as growth in net interest income, driven by rising interest rates and higher loan balances, was more than offset by lower noninterest income as market conditions negatively impacted our venture capital, mortgage banking, investment banking, and wealth management advisory businesses,” CEO Charlie Scharf said during the call, according to a transcript from investment website Motley Fool.
For coverage of the company’s first-quarter earnings, click here. Scroll down for the main takeaways from the second-quarter report.
Wealth management revenue and earnings
Wells Fargo’s wealth and investment management unit earned $3.7 billion in the quarter ending on June 30, a 5% increase from the same time a year ago. The increase was driven by higher interest rates and loans, as Chief Financial Officer Mike Santomassimo explained during the Q2 earnings call.

“The increase in net interest income due to the impact of higher rates and higher loan balances more than offset the declines in asset-based fees, driven by lower market valuations as well as lower retail brokerage transaction activity,” Santomassimo said, according to the transcript.

Net interest income rose 50% year-over-year to $916 million for the second quarter, while noninterest income fell by 5% to $2.789 billion compared to a year ago.

CFRA research director Kenneth Leon said that while Wells Fargo’s platform changes demonstrate a desire to innovate, the bank’s competitors are moving faster in the digital sphere.

“WFC is trying to catch up to leading bank peers with competitive platforms for both consumer and commercial banking,” Leon said in a research note. “We think WFC is on the right track but competitors are innovating faster with digital banking.”
Decrease in advisor headcount and clients assets
The total number of financial and wealth advisors in the company’s wealth management arm fell by 635 to 12,184 advisors in Q2, representing a 5% decrease from 12,819 advisors at the same time last year. While the number of advisors decreased, annualized revenue per advisor grew for the second quarter to $1.2 million, marking a 11.9% increase from a year ago.

Total client assets also decreased in the second quarter, falling by 14% year-over-year to $1.835 trillion.

Expenses and loans rise
The wealth management arm’s noninterest expenses rose by 1% year-over-year to $2.9 billion for the second quarter. Average loans also grew 5% from a year ago to $85.9 billion, while average deposits fell by 1% from one year ago to $173.7 billion.

Santomassimo attributed the rise in average loans to the “continued momentum in securities-based lending,” while the decline in average deposits came as “clients reallocate cash into higher-yielding alternatives.”
Changes to differentiate wealth management division
CEO Scharf also discussed changes to platforms used by the wealth management segment to build a more differentiated service offering for clients.

Wells Fargo historically separated its digital platform and platform for independent advisors and ran both “as separate businesses with separate product platforms and separate technology,” Scharf said. Now, he said, the company has “combined the entire field under one leader,” so that there is “one set of products and service capabilities that all of those product lines have access to.”

“We are building out capabilities across all the dimensions from the investment capabilities to the banking capabilities, our lending capabilities, offering trust in the other areas of distribution that didn’t have access to those in the past,” Scharf said. “It’s an offering across all of our product sets directed in a much more segmented way than we’ve ever done in the past.”

Jem Shin
Editorial intern, Financial Planning