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Wells Fargo (WFC) jumped deeper into the crowded pool of managing people's wealth at the very time when most Americans were becoming poorer. It still managed to find riches — and it wants more.
The fourth-largest bank now gets 30% of its fees from selling investment, brokerage and other wealth-management services to customers — more than it gets from any other business, including its massive mortgage operation. It is looking for acquisitions to enlarge the wealth unit, executives said this month. And while that business currently makes only a fraction of the income Wells Fargo gets from its larger consumer and wholesale banking businesses, its steady stream of fees is vital at a time when the bank's overall revenue has dropped.
"It's one of the few areas where you can still make money, as opposed to some of the economic challenges in the core businesses," says Teresa Epperson, a managing director with consulting firm AlixPartners.
Wealth-management is one of the few bright spots in financial services these days, and Wells Fargo faces stiff competition as it tries to find more money in the pockets of its more affluent customers. Banks from PNC Financial Services (PNC) to JPMorgan Chase (JPM) are building up similar businesses, hoping they can provide steadier revenue at a time when new loan demand has yet to pick up, interest rates are terminally low and regulations have crimped an array of fee-generating businesses.
But Wells, which has spent the past four years consolidating its purchase of Wachovia and employs more than 15,000 financial advisors, is trying to create a more mass-market version of what some of its more elite competitors offer. That means touting retirement plans and training bank tellers to field questions about brokerage services, instead of hiring fleets of private bankers and building new branches focused on the very rich.
"We want you to get a very consistent experience and very consistent advice no matter where you plug into Wells Fargo," David Carroll, the senior executive vice president who oversees the bank's wealth, brokerage and retirement unit, said in an interview last week.
"People need financial advice now more than ever. This current generation and the one coming in behind it don't have defined-benefit pension plans," he added. "People are going to be forced to be more accountable for their own financial future than they ever have been in the last 100 years, and yet the world seems more complicated and riskier than it has been in a long time."
It's a complication that has paid off for the biggest banks and wealth-management specialists, largely because of the regular fees customers pay for such financial advice and related products. While median household wealth in this country dropped almost 40% between 2007 and 2010, the total net worth of U.S. households has recovered since the financial crisis, according to the Federal Reserve. Now banks are increasingly competing for the individuals who have benefited from that recovery.
"It's a challenging market — there's been some consolidation in the past, and now what we're doing is recreating some players," says analyst Marty Mosby of Guggenheim Securities. Wells Fargo is "one of those new players on the block that really has a chance to set itself up there with the titans of Wall Street."
