Barry Sommers
Senior Executive Vice President and CEO /
Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management
By Kelsey Casselbury
With a strategic focus on attracting top-tier financial advisors and enhancing digital accessibility through significant technology investments, Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management CEO Barry Sommers and his management team aim to empower advisors and provide clients with a robust, efficient investment platform and research-based guidance.
When Barry Sommers joined Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management four years ago, one of his first priorities was to hear directly from the financial advisors who work with clients as to what worked and what didn’t. “What’s nice about advisors is that they’re not shy,” Sommers said in an interview with CEO North America magazine. “They’ll give you a lot of feedback.”
During the “listening tour,” as Sommers called it, the leadership team developed a dynamic scorecard—that’s evolving even to this day—that listed the issues brought forth by the advisors, who can access and review it. It offers full transparency for the advisors to see the next issue that the management team will tackle, and Sommers believes it has changed the relationship between the advisors and the management team.
Meeting Needs with Comprehensive Solutions
There’s nothing more important than having a full platform of investment products, Sommers claimed, whether it’s on the brokerage side or the advisory side. Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management has approximately $2.2 trillion worth of client assets, half of which are in advisory products, and about $100 billion in loans.
“it’s imperative that when people work with advisors that there’s access to bright people and timely information. We deliver products, but also timely insight to help our clients navigate and follow the markets.”
Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, or FiNet, is one of three Wells Fargo Advisors distribution channels and is the fastest-growing channel in its wealth business. In addition to FiNet, the company offers two more distribution channels : First, there’s our in bank channel with more than 5,000 Wells Fargo consumer bank branches, with “a few thousand” financial advisors who work with the consumer bankers and their clients on both the deposit and banking side together they can offer Wells Fargo Premier.
“It’s a business that [Wells Fargo CEO] Charlie Scharf and I helped build at JPMorganChase,” where the two used to work together, Sommers said, noting that he works closely with Saul Van Beurden, who runs Wells Fargo’s consumer bank. “We’re really excited about the huge opportunity to work with affluent clients at the consumer bank, helping them with their investment needs.”
The final distribution channel, a traditional wire-house model, also through Wells Fargo Advisors, is where advisors work with clients for a differentiated experience that provides comprehensive strategies designed to simplify the complexity of the client’s wealth.
“People ask me about the culture here, and I tell them that the people who work here care.”
A Magnet for Talented Advisors
Over the next three to five years, Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management aims to attract high-quality, talented financial advisors to the team—but they’re already well on their way to achieving that goal, Sommers said. “We’re coming off the last two years as the most successful we’ve had in attracting experienced advisors to our platform,” he noted.
He noted that the wealth management industry has seen a growing desire of financial advisors to have access to a robust platform, but also the ability to own the business and work for themselves, an option provided through FiNet.
“We believe that advisors are in the best position to decide which channels work best for them and their clients, Sommers said.” We offer them that choice, and if that choice changes, we make it easy to seamlessly migrate to that channel without any customer impact, without even changing an account number.”
Upgrading the Digital Experience
These days, both advisors and clients want the ability to access information where, when, and how they want, which is why the company is making a significant investment into its digital platform. However, this work also serves another purpose: “You see natural efficiencies when clients don’t necessarily have to pick up the phone and call us,” Sommers said.
While advisors are the cornerstone of a financial relationship, it’s also the team’s job to make sure there’s a plethora of ways that the clients can interact with the bank and manage their money—which makes technology one of the most important parts of the business. A few years ago, Wells Fargo invested more than $1.5 billion in its technology, and “it’s been really fun to watch these investments that we made a few years ago all start rolling out and being used by the clients,” the business executive shared.
“We have hundreds of people whose job every day is to wake up and make sure that advisors have the arrows and the quiver and what they need to be successful.”
Leveraging Internal Partnerships
While Wells Fargo Wealth & Investment Management works with plenty of outside suppliers and vendors, Sommers emphasizes the value of strong internal partnerships that make the team work efficiently.
Within Wealth & Investment Management, the Wells Fargo Investment Institute is a research-based and -focused platform geared toward providing investment recommendations to advisors and clients, Darrell Cronk, Chief Investment Officer for Wealth & Investment Management and president of Wells Fargo Investment Institute said, and all guidance should encapsulate three parts: One, what is the recommendation? Two, why should they care? And three, what, if anything, should they be doing about it?
“When we put out research on anything, I tell the teams, all research should encapsulate three things for the advisors and clients. “The best advice and guidance is only as good as something you can understand and advise to the client in straight-forward terms, then apply it in the portfolio,” Cronk shared.
“Our management wakes up every single day and acknowledges that it’s our job to build this world-class platform for our advisors, or they’ll go somewhere else.”
Outside of Wealth & Investment Management Sommers called out not only Van Beurden of the consumer bank, but also Fernando Rivas, a recent hire who serves as the co-CEO of Wells Fargo’s Corporate & Investment Banking alongside Jon Weiss, and Kyle Hranicky, its CEO of Commercial Banking.
“The partnership that I get on the operating committee level with them is flawless,” Sommers said. “We never think about who gets credit. Our job is to deliver Wells Fargo to our clients to help them in their needs—and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
Cronk sees it the same way. “There’s no lack of sharing of ideas and engagement there,” he said in a magazine interview with CEO NA.
“You end up with more ideas than you can possibly realize.
