Wells Fargo taps new head of wealth management group

Wells Fargo & Co. on Wednesday said it had tapped a former JPMorgan Chase executive to lead its wealth and investment management group, dubbed internally as WIM, which includes its more than 13,000 advisers and registered reps.

The executive, Barry Sommers, will officially start on Monday, June 22. He will report to the bank’s CEO, Charlie Scharf, according to a statement from the company.

The bank had been searching for a new head of its wealth and investment management group since February, when it promoted the group’s former chief, Jon Weiss, to CEO of corporate and investment banking.

Until April 2019, Sommers was CEO of Wealth Management at JPMorgan Chase, where he was responsible for its private bank and brokerage businesses. Sommers also served as CEO of the Consumer Bank, where he managed the bank branch network.

Many advisers at Wells Fargo have been under a cloud since 2016; that’s when Wells Fargo & Co., the parent of Wells Fargo Advisors, reported that bank employees had secretly created millions of unauthorized accounts in the names of customers without their consent. The bank was fined $185 million and then-CEO John Stumpf resigned. Myriad bank-related scandals followed.

Wells Fargo Advisors’ head count continued to drop at the end of last year, with the firm reporting 13,512 financial advisers at the end of December, a drop of 456 — or 3.3% — over the twelve months of 2019.

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