If this past weekend’s free community event hosted by Wells Fargo made you feel all warm and fuzzy, and think maybe WF really is just a nice little community bank, then here‘s the reality check.
The Charlotte Observer ran a story this morning on the bank’s new “boutique” service for the super rich — you know, that 1 percent of folks the Occupy movement does not represent.
Wells Fargo is launching a boutique business to serve families with at least $50 million in assets, an example of the banking industry’s increasing focus on high-net-worth customers.
Abbot Downing, as it is to be called, will manage $27.5 billion in assets for about 575 clients and will offer wealth management, investment and banking services for families and their endowments and foundations.
It has about 300 employees, including a team of about a dozen employees in Charlotte and 80 across North Carolina.
The brand will roll out in April. It merges Wells Fargo’s Family Wealth and Lowry Hill businesses and Wachovia’s legacy Calibre business.
What Charlotte really needs are loans for small businesses and home loans with reasonable interest rates.
Not that banking news is all bad today. In the department of too-little, too-late, it looks like public pressure has forced Bank of America and Wells Fargo to scrap plans to charge those little-people debit-card fees.
As the Biz Journal reported yesterday:
The abrupt changes in policies should be seen as a win for customers who made their displeasure known and received concessions. But how long will it last?
Banks lost billions in annual revenue when Congress took away their unbridled ability to charge fees to merchants whenever a debit card is swiped, capping such charges at 21 cents on average. Banks implemented the monthly fees to recoup that cash. All three large banks expected more than $1 billion a year in lost fees.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2011.
you do realize Wells Fargo is the only Small Business Loans lender to have eclipsed the 1BN mark in lendable value this year?
It addition, Wells has also restructured more home loans both in number and % of outstanding loans than any other major bank in the US.
If you prefer, Wells could also not seek additional business with the ultra-high net worth and get those 12 jobs out of Charlotte and 80 out of NC.
It helps to be balanced as a journalist sometime.
Whats wrong with smart business practices. How does this make them the enemy of the little guy??? I really think every writer from CL is one of the collective trying to get everyone to assimilate. Don’t you all blow up in the end! Yeah good ending.
Banks have been doing this for years. This isn’t news, just more bank bashing. Dont you idiots understand what would happen to the local economy if you took the banks out of Charlotte!
They should convert all their assets to cash, then dump the dollars on the “Occupy (insert city name here)” residents. Of course, that would be the only fair thing to do.
Mega businesses are scary to me. Massive numbers of customers, key punch and other employees looks to me like makes for a greater chance of error, bigger hassle to correct the errors not to mention a complete lack of personal relationships. Cold and sterile. We are already in the process of moving our accounts from Wells Fargo to a community bank.