Wells Fargo is intensifying efforts to recruit financial advisers after spending five years reshaping its wealth-management division, reported Bloomberg.
Its current recruitment effort is centred on independent advisers, who are not salaried employees of the bank but operate using its platform.
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In a statement to Private Banker International, Wells Fargo Advisors head Sol Gindi said: “Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management continues to attract high-quality advisor talent across markets throughout the United States. Our multichannel model gives advisors the flexibility to choose the business structure that best aligns with how they wish to run their practice and support clients’ needs.
Advisors increasingly value our combination of national scale, local support, and comprehensive capabilities. For those serving high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, our integrated Private Wealth offering provides specialized planning, investment, trust, and banking solutions designed to serve even the most complex clients.”
Gianluca Palermo, managing partner at Infinity Private Wealth, moved from Bank of America earlier this year to join Wells Fargo as an independent adviser, bringing $1.8bn in client assets.
“I have all the tools at my disposal, but nobody is telling me what to do with my clients,” Palermo said in an interview to Bloomberg.
James Taylor transferred his team and close to $6bn in client assets from Morgan Stanley in May.
“I think that’s been great that Wells has been skating to where the puck’s going,” Taylor said.
Wells Fargo gave him a place to move to without needing to change banks again if he decides to become independent later, he said.
The initiative is part of a wider restructuring led by Barry Sommers, who has been overseeing Wells Fargo’s wealth-management business since being hired in 2020 by CEO Charlie Scharf, his former manager at JPMorgan Chase.
Rather than opposing the move towards independent advisers, Sommers worked to make that model easier to pursue with support from the bank.
“We’re always going to be constantly improving our platform, but we have all the right products and services, the right technology, and we’re focused now on growing this business,” Sommers said.
The bank’s standing had been damaged by a series of scandals that led thousands of advisers to leave.
The fake accounts scandal exposed failings in risk controls and governance, and the Federal Reserve placed an unusual limit on the bank’s asset growth for several years. That restriction was removed last year.
