A Western flavor to Wells Fargo’s retail shake-up

Wells Fargo has reorganized its retail banking management team again as the company tries to boost customer referrals while not opening old wounds caused by its fake-accounts scandal.

Retail banking chief Mary Mack has shuffled the leaders of its Western U.S. regions, and appointed four executives to new positions, in Wells’ so-called community banking segment, according to a May 24 memo that was reported on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal. Some of the worst reports of consumer abuses came from Wells operations in states such as California and Arizona.

The new round of personnel assignments is “responsive to our priorities of rebuilding trust with team members and customers and transforming the Community Bank team member and customer experience so that we can learn from the past and be even better than before,” Mack wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by American Banker.

The changes came two weeks after Wells executives acknowledged at the company’s investor day that the fraudulent-accounts scandal has hurt various segments of its business. Consumer lending products like home equity loans, and referrals from retail banking to wealth management, have suffered due to the scandal, Wells said during a presentation.

Mack became the head of retail and small-business banking in July 2016, just before Wells was fined $185 million for opening 2 million bogus accounts. She replaced Carrie Tolstedt, who was forced to resign. Mack has been tasked with rebuilding customer trust and moving the company away from a sales-oriented corporate culture.

Wells named five executives for its Western region as it reduced the number of subregions from eight. Don Pearson will lead the Desert region, which includes Arizona and other states; David Galasso will head up Northern, Central and Southern California; Dave Kvamme will lead the Midwest/East region; John Sotoodeh was named head of the Midwest/West region; and Jim Foley will lead the Northwest region, which includes parts of Northern California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

Two executives who had been leaders of regions under the previous setup, Ben Alvarado and Frank Newman, will be assigned to different posts elsewhere in Wells Fargo.

Mack’s memo also announced these changes: Bob Chlebowski was named branch distribution executive; Laurey Cosentino will head the customer and branch experience team; Celeste Finley was named leader of the regional services group; and Jonathan Velline was appointed head of business strategy and administration. All four will report to Mack.

Wells did not terminate any employees in the latest management shuffling.

Wells also continues to interview candidates for head of the customer segments group, a newly created position, and expects to announce the hire in the coming weeks, Mack said.