Wells Fargo

Founded in 1852, Wells Fargo & Company is a multinational financial services company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It is the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by assets of $1.5 trillion and the largest bank by market capitalization. The company also has been rated as the second largest bank in deposits, debit cards and home mortgage servicing.

History

Wells Fargo built its financial entity through a merger between San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Company and Minneapolis-based Norwest Corporation in 1998. The merger seemed a strategic and farsighted move in its preserving the Wells Fargo's name and trademark ‘stagecoach’ for the maximum capital value.

At the time after the first acquisition, the company's operation still was confined in in-store branches. There were many such branches located inside commercial buildings, which are almost exclusively grocery stores, that usually are equipped with basic teller services, ATMs, and, if space permits, an office for private meetings with customers.

The formation of the current Wells Fargo financial business started from the controversial buying of Charlotte-based Wachovia. October 3, 2008, Wachovia conceded the agreement of acquisition from Wells Fargo for about $14.8B in an all-stock transaction. This news arrived rightly four days after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) made moves to endorse Citigroup to buy Wachovia for $2.1B. Regardless of Citigroup's protest and threat to take legal action, the deal with Wells Fargo overwhelmingly won shareholder approval since it valued Wachovia 7 times over Citigroup's offer. Furthermore, Wachovia issued Wells Fargo with preferred stock holding 39.9% of the voting power in the company to win more of the shareholder approval.

The acquisition evoked New York state judge issuing a temporary injunction, while the whole event ended with Wells Fargo's incontestable triumph and Citigroup's acquiescent retreat.

Since then, the company has grown from a chain of small banks in Midwest into a national company with a growing global presence, providing banking, mortgage, insurance, investments, and consumer and commercial finance through more than 9,000 localities, around 13,000 ATMs, online, and mobile devices.

Operation

Wells Fargo is now offering a range of financial services in over 80 different business lines, delineating three different business segments in operation: Community Banking, Wholesale Banking, and Wealth, Brokerage and Retirement.

Community Banking

The Community Banking segment includes Diversified Products, Regional Banking and the Consumer Deposits groups, as well as Wells Fargo Customer Connection (formerly known as Wells Fargo Phone Bank, the National Business Banking Center, Wachovia Direct Access, and Credit Card Customer Service).

Wealth, Brokerage, and Retirement

Wells Fargo offers investment products to personal or small business through its subsidiaries, Wells Fargo Investments, LLC and Wells Fargo Advisors, LLC, as well as its numerous national broker/dealer firms. The mutual funds are brand named Wells Fargo Advantage Funds. The company service also caters for high net worth individuals through family wealth group and its private bank.

Wells Fargo Advisors, known as Wachovia Securities, legally adopted the name since May 1, 2009 when Wells Fargo's acquisition of Wachovia Corporation became official. It is the brokerage subsidiary of Wells Fargo company, located in St. Louis, Missouri. It is ranked the third largest brokerage firm in the United States as of the 3Q of 2010 with $1.1 trillion retail client assets under management.

Wholesale Banking

The Wholesale Banking segment contains products and services aiming for large and middle-size market commercial companies, as well as consumers on a wholesale basis. The products and service package includes lending, asset-based lending, mutual funds, corporate and institutional trust services, treasury management, commercial real estate, and capital markets and investment banking services through Wells Fargo Securities. Among these, asset-based lending, lending to prominent companies with accounts receivable and inventory as collateral, and less traditional assets to be included, is very profitable sector contributing to Wells Fargo’s revenue. Historically, this type of lending has been issued when normal means of raising funds, such as unsecured bank loans, or the Capital Markets have been depleted. The primary business unit practicing this activity is Wells Fargo Capital Finance. Wells Fargo also owns Eastdil Secured, which is commonly known as a real estate investment bank but is essentially one of the most renowned commercial real estate brokers for large amount of transactions, such as buying and selling large Class-A office buildings in hub of business areas throughout the United States.

Featured Products and Service

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage is the largest retail mortgage lending product in the United States, as of Q3 2011, having granted one out of every four home loans. Wells Fargo has invested $1.8 trillion in home mortgages, making it the second largest servicing portfolio in the U.S.

Wells Fargo Securities

Wells Fargo Securities, WFS, is the investment banking sector of Wells Fargo & Co. It is lined at the 9th among the largest securities firms in the U.S. and is functioning today as the unity of several legacy enterprises, most notably Wachovia Securities. WFS is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina with other U.S. spreading in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Boston, and San Francisco, and it now has the international offices in London and Hong Kong.

Cross-selling

A substantial part of Wells Fargo's business strategy is cross-selling. It’s a practice to build customer loyalty buy encouraging them to purchase extended banking products. Customers questioning about their banking account may be suggested with mortgage deals, while mortgage holders can possibly be offered credit card, all for the increasing of the customer's profitability to the bank, and to make it less possible for the customer opt for different bank. Other banks have attempted to follow Wells Fargo's cross-selling practices though with no excellence.

Internet services

Wells Fargo has its personal computer banking service up and running in 1989 and was the first in its peers to introduce online banking in May 1995.

Vision and Value

The company vision is customer satisfaction in their financial needs and economic success. As stated in company reports, the vision has nothing to do with mere business, promoting products or acquiring size for the sake of bigness. It's about building lifelong relationships one customer at a time.

Besides the distinctive vision statement, Wells Fargo has five primary values that are based on its vision and provides the foundation for everything they do. The five values are, People as a competitive advantage, Ethics, What's right for customers, Diversity and inclusion, Leadership.

People

Wells Fargo perceives its employees as team members, rather than individuals that are being hired. The management well understands people naturally aspire to a larger purpose beyond themselves. They want to become treasured resource to be invested in, not expenses to be avoided. Thus seeing a person as a member, building a teamwork spirit are essential to the success in helping customers. The ideal is, Wells Fargo is a relationship company, and the relationships with the customers are only as strong as the relationships with each other. The team members are the most important constituents because they’re the single most important influence on customers. The company is building the team members to be customers, too.

Ethics

Trust, honesty, and business integrity are essence to reach the highest aspiration of corporate governance. This is even more important in the banking industry because everything that is being done is built on trust. It will not happen with one occasion of a successful business transaction, will not happen in one day or even in one quarter. It's a earned relationship by genuinely constructed relationship. The company, the management, the whole team have to earn that trust every day by behaving ethically; rewarding open, honest, reciprocal communication; and holding themselves accountable for the decisions made and actions taken.

What's right for customers

The customers, external and internal, are friends on coach. The company is advocating and representing its customers' best interests. The promise is assured to protect customers confidential information for their own business purpose, excluding any chance for discredited commercial convenience.

Diversity and Inclusion

It's a strategic imperative that lets the company take advantage of the creativity and innovation that can only be availed from multiple perspectives and allows quick and effective response to customer needs here at home and all across the globe. It's a value also to help to understand customers more comprehensively, perceive business opportunities in new ways and excel in serving the needs of company's growing customer segments.

Diverse representation alone is not the desired outcome. An inclusive culture that is accommodating differences and open to new ideas that is helpful to create a competitive edge in the marketplace is also being cultivated. Otherwise, the true value of diversity will go unrealized.

The company's diversity and inclusion strategy is implemented as: Diverse segment outreach. Diverse Segments team reaches out to diverse communities to help better serve and earn more business from South America, Asian and African American, lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender, Women, People with Disabilities and other important communities.

Supplier diversity

The company integrates supplier diversity into its overall vendor sourcing process, boosting economic development and encouraging job creation in the diverse communities it serves.

Diversity councils

The company's CEO chairs the company's Enterprise Diversity Council, which consists senior executives from across all the divisions and branches of Wells Fargo. Regional and line-of-business diversity councils are also established to support the company's diversity and inclusion efforts.

Leadership

In Wells Fargo, all are called to be leaders—to be the link between the vision of Wells Fargo and its customers. It's not the strongest or most intelligent who survive in this industry but rather those who best adapt to change. Wells Fargo defines leadership as the act of establishing, sharing, and communicating its vision and the art of motivating others to understand and embrace the vision. The company believes, everyone can be a leader.

Social Responsibility

Environmental Awareness

Newsweek magazine’s “Green Rankings” award named Wells Fargo No.1 among banks and insurance companies – and No.13 among country’s 500-largest companies. So far, Wells Fargo has offered more than $6 billion investment in environmentally friendly business opportunities, including sponsoring 185 commercial-scale solar photovoltaic projects and 27 utility-scale wind projects.

As a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Leaders program, Wells Fargo’s goal for the Environmental Preservation is to reduce the absolute greenhouse gas emissions from its U.S. operations by 20% below 2008 levels by 2018.

The ‘Green Policy’" is the openness and clarity about the environmental efforts, treasuring both accomplishments and recognizing challenges, sharing more of the experiences, ideas and thoughts in the course of integrating environmental responsibility into company’s daily business. By working together, the company will do even more to safeguard and preserve natural resources for the generations to come.

To support such incentive, Wells Fargo has launched the first environment concerned blog within the industry to promulgate its environmental stewardship and to solicit feedback and ideas from its stakeholders.

Humanity Concern

Wells Fargo has been committed to building strong communities by contributing hundred millions to numerous nonprofits. In 2013 company’s achievement in this area marks the 5th consecutive year of more than $200 million in total annual corporate giving. Humanity concern is a commitment that’s core to the company’s vision and values. It’s the communities where customers and the company’s team members live, work, and do business.

Wells Fargo’s community investments included donation to educational programs and schools around the U.S. and in the form of grants of affordable housing, workforce development and job creation, financial education to nonprofits focused on community development. In addition, Wells Fargo’s funding serves also Arts and Culture, Civic service, Environment, and Human Services

Team Member Giving and Volunteerism

Team members are boasting their increasing community involvement and volunteer hours. These hours represent continuous increase over the years and a mounting monetary value. Besides corporate contribution, Wells Fargo team members donated millions to more than thousands of nonprofits and educational units in Wells Fargo’s yearly Community Support and United Way Campaign. For that end, in 2013 United Way Worldwide honored Wells Fargo’s campaign No. 1 in the U.S. with the recognition of the company’s team member giving in the 5th consecutive year. Combined with other year-round donations to nonprofits, team members’ giving hit a record high with years. Team member donations and volunteerism are calculated separately and are not included in Wells Fargo’s corporate giving totals.