Wells Fargo at Barclays Conference: Growth Post-Asset Cap

On Tuesday, 09 September 2025, Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) presented at the Barclays 23rd Annual Global Financial Services Conference, offering a strategic overview of its performance and future direction. The company highlighted its strong consumer base and recent asset cap removal, which opens doors for growth and investment. However, the impact of this change will take time to materialize fully.

Key Takeaways

• Wells Fargo plans to grow organically across all business segments, with a high bar for acquisitions.
• The company is optimistic about achieving best-in-class returns, focusing on efficiency and shareholder value.
• Asset cap removal allows for increased marketing and growth in consumer and commercial deposits.
• Credit quality remains stable, with a focus on monitoring the office space sector.
• Wells Fargo continues to return capital to shareholders through share buybacks.

Financial Results

Wells Fargo anticipates loan growth in both consumer portfolios, such as auto and credit cards, and the commercial and industrial space. The company reports stable deposit trends with opportunities for aggressive growth in commercial deposits. Net interest income is expected to remain consistent with the previous year, while fee income has seen growth, particularly in investment advisory fees. The efficiency ratio is currently at 63%-64%, with expectations for improvement as returns increase.

Operational Updates

The removal of the asset cap is progressing well, enabling Wells Fargo to pursue growth opportunities proactively. The company has simplified operations by closing or selling 13 businesses, saving $12 billion in expenses, and reinvesting in its core operations. The consumer banking sector is seeing growth in checking accounts, and the auto business is expanding with partnerships like those with Volkswagen and Audi in the U.S.

Future Outlook

Wells Fargo expects continued loan growth through the end of the year and plans to be more competitive in growing commercial deposits. The company will continue share buybacks, subject to growth opportunities and risk assessments. Regulatory changes are being closely monitored, with expectations for more clarity on CCAR and Basel III reforms next year.

Q&A Highlights

During the Q&A session, Wells Fargo emphasized its focus on organic growth, though it remains open to high-bar acquisitions. The company plans to use excess capital for growth and share buybacks, with no immediate changes to the pace of capital return. Credit quality is strong, with particular attention to the office space portfolio, which appears to be stabilizing.

Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a detailed account of Wells Fargo’s strategic insights and financial outlook.

Full transcript - Barclays 23rd Annual Global Financial Services Conference:

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Next up, very pleased to have Wells Fargo with us. Welcome back, Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer. Mike, thanks for joining us again. While I ask my first question, we can put up the first ARS question. Mike, I always like to start big picture with you, just given Wells covers so much of the country, you know, both consumer, commercial, institutional, and just maybe talk about kind of what you’re seeing and hearing across each segment as they grapple with the evolving landscape.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Thanks again for having us, as always, a great event. What we’re seeing is kind of more of the same of what we’ve been seeing very consistently quarter after quarter, which is a strong consumer. Spending continues to be up year over year. I think delinquency rates continue to go down. Payment rates on credit cards continue to be a little bit higher than what we would have expected. All that leads to a pretty strong consumer. We’re just not seeing that change much. The categories of spend move around every week, every month, every quarter a little bit. Gas might be down year on year, but that’s getting filled in different categories. Very consistent performance across the consumer space. It just keeps happening that way week after week and month after month.

Despite what you may read in terms of softening, we’re seeing activity levels still be quite strong and credit performance still be quite good. On the commercial side, pretty similar to what we’ve seen over the past. Credit performance continues to be quite strong. The kind of middle market commercial bank type customer is still not borrowing against the revolver in any significant way. There’s still some prudence and caution about what could come within the overall sort of backdrop. We’re seeing quite good performance. We are seeing some loan growth in the large corporate space and the CNI space overall. What we’re seeing again is just very consistent now for a while. We’re not seeing big layoffs. We’re not seeing big inventory builds. We’re not seeing big changes really in any significant way. I’d say quite solid overall. That has continued into the quarter.

That all is in this backdrop of still some uncertainty in terms of where the overall economic picture might be going. People come into this in pretty good position overall. Hopefully that will continue. So far we’re not seeing any signs of it changing in any significant way.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: I’ll put up the next ARS question. Against this backdrop in June, after seven years, we finally got the asset cap removed. I think while we all kind of understand the impact may not be immediate, I was just hoping we can kind of run through expectation on when and where we could see this impact over time. Just maybe first off, you know, for several years it feels like Wells Fargo has kind of been, you know, obviously outwardly focused, but also spending a lot of time inwardly focused and, you know, a pretty large regulatory agenda. I think every time you guys speak, that was kind of number one on your list.

Asset cap lifted, you know, maybe just talk to how it gives you the ability to pivot to more of a kind of a growth mindset, you know, redirect your resources and just how is this progressing. Have you started to see any results of this?

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Yeah, I mean, look, the short answer is it’s going really well, right? I think that, and so we’re really happy to kind of see the company sort of move past this. Before I go there, I’d be remiss to say, look, this has been the culmination of years’ worth of work across many thousands of people across the company. We’re thankful for that persistence and sort of that execution across it. I think so, and then the asset cap was one piece of it, but it, you know, 13 consent orders going away and sort of all the risk management infrastructure that’s been built. We’re a better company for it now than we were prior to all the work that’s there. Now, when you start thinking about that, the growth, it’s not something that we’re starting from today, right?

This is something as we were working on the risk management and regulatory work over the years, we started to change the company and really pivot it towards sort of the businesses that we think have the best opportunity over the long run. We’ve simplified the company. We’ve sold or closed or exited 13 different businesses along the way. We’ve saved $12 billion of expenses and reinvested that back in the businesses. We’ve taken headcount down significantly from the peak. We’ve reinvested in people, technology, products across really every single one of the businesses. Remember, we’ve also been changing the people that are there too. So 80% of the top 200 people are new to their jobs, new to the company. The management team is mostly new as well.

A lot of that change is something that’s been happening now for the last three, four, five years in some cases, depending on each of the businesses. Now that the asset cap’s gone, I think we can more proactively go after the opportunity that was there. It’s everything from increasing sort of marketing spend in the consumer side, reintroducing incentive plans in our consumer bank, very, very competitively going after, proactively going after deposits across the commercial space, lending opportunities across the commercial space, the wealth management opportunity. I know we’ll dig into all these a little bit more. I think that mindset is very much, you know, embedded in sort of the company today. I think now we just got to continue to execute it. Keep in mind this, it doesn’t happen in a week or a month, right?

This does take some time to sort of really see that growth come through, but we’re very excited about it. I think we’re seeing some really good green shoots come through even so far in the quarter.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: How do we sit here and kind of measure that? Because we look, since the asset cap went into effect, industry assets, deposits up 40%. By definition, Wells Fargo is basically flat. Maybe just delve into how should we dimensionalize some of the biggest, you touched on with some loan deposit, fee opportunities around that.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: During COVID and the asset cap, when the asset cap was in place, we had to push off a lot of business. We had to not proactively go after a lot of opportunities that we had in front of us. The industry grew and we were sort of held roughly flat, as you mentioned. When you start thinking about deposits in the consumer side of the business, we weren’t proactively marketing in any significant way. We had to re-engineer a lot of the way in which we sold products and sold our checking accounts and opportunities through the consumer bank. We reintroduced incentive plans last year. We’ve increased our marketing. We’ve kind of rebuilt that sort of space in a pretty significant way. You’ve seen our marketing spend increase now for the last couple of years as we continue to lean more into that.

I think you’ll start to see more and more activation through the branch system to grow that core checking accounts across the consumer space. You can see it in our branches today. We’ve got new advertising, new marketing, new plans, new people to go after that overall opportunity. Adjacent to the consumer side is the opportunity we have in the wealth management business, not only in the core advisor franchise that we’ve had for a long time, but we’ve been investing in what we call Wells Fargo Premier, which allows us to go after that higher-end consumer customer that already is in our branch system. If we can do a good job bringing wealth management services to that customer base, they’ll bring 50% more banking on average to us as well, both in deposits and loans.

In the consumer side and the wealth side, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to continue to lean into there more and grow that opportunity. We’ve started to see some checking account growth last year for the first time in a while. We’ll see 2x that or more this year. I think you’ll continue to see that build over time. On the commercial side, on the deposit side, that’s just an area that we had to back away from with the asset cap in place, particularly given our experience during COVID. The teams are very excited to go after the opportunity that’s there. I think we’re starting to see some good traction on the pipeline just in the last couple of months as we’ve come out of the asset cap already across both the Corporate Investment Bank and the Commercial Bank.

I think there’ll be a lot of opportunity based on what we’re seeing in that engagement with clients. On the lending side, if you start in the consumer businesses, we’ve been retooling our auto business to be more of a full spectrum lender. We just signed up and went operational earlier this year with Volkswagen and Audi here in the U.S. You started to see a little bit of growth in the second quarter. I think you’ll continue to see that grow, and we’re seeing that continue to grow as we go into the third quarter so far. I think the credit card business is a huge opportunity for us to continue to grow. You’ve seen some of that already in the balances come through, but I think that’s just getting started in terms of the opportunity that we have over a much longer time period to grow that business.

I think we’re finding the products out there have a compelling value proposition. I think we’re seeing good uptake from the types of clients that we want to build into that business. The one exception could be home lending, where I think we’ve repositioned our portfolio, but I think you’ll start to see that has declined a little bit as we’ve gone over the last couple of years. I think you’ll see that decline a bit less as we go into the next number of quarters. On the commercial side, we’ve expected to see some growth in the commercial and industrial loan space. We saw some of that in the quarter. I think we’ve got a few quarters now in a row where I think you’re starting to see that grow. Most of it’s coming from the Corporate Investment Bank so far.

I think you’re still not quite seeing the lending opportunity manifest yet in the Commercial Bank. People just aren’t borrowing a lot against the revolvers yet still. I think utilization is still relatively low. I think you’ll start to see that pick up as people continue to have more confidence that, you know, the tail events from an economic perspective are off the table, which I think people are getting more and more comfortable with as time goes by. I think you’ll continue to see us grow and you’ll start to see us grow again in the real estate business and the other categories on the commercial side. I think you’re going to, you know, you’ll start to see us, you know, more, you’ll start to see some of that growth come through, I think, over the next couple of quarters.

When you look at the place that’s been most impacted by the asset cap, the capital markets business, where we just haven’t been able to do a lot of the financing activity that others have done, you’ve seen our trading assets increase now for the last, you know, 18 months, 24 months as a start, as we’ve had capacity to grow that. We’re seeing really good reception from clients. We’ve been onboarding, you know, a significant number of clients and opportunities over the last, you know, a couple of quarters. I think you’ll start to see that continue to grow as we go. We’re very confident that that opportunity is there.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: A lot in there. Maybe we’ll circle back on some of that. I guess just shifting gears to the expenses related to the asset cap. You know, despite headcounts of the company going down overall, I think you’ve added 10,000 people on kind of risk and control related groups and spent $2.5 billion more in 2024 than 2018 in those areas. Is there, I guess, rationalization to be done? I assume there is. How long does that take and what does that process look like?

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: I would start with the overall opportunity of efficiency opportunity first, and I’ll come back to that. I think we come into this budgeting cycle for next year with the same mindset we’ve had for the last four or five years. We still think there’s a lot of opportunity across most parts of the company to get more efficient. Some of that’s technology driven, some of it’s not. I think you’ll see us continue to drive that and continue to embed that continuous mindset and improvement mindset into the company. That’s what’s really going to be most important over a period of time. This is not an expense program. You have to build it into the way you operate every day, every quarter, and really continue to consistently drive improvement. I think we’re like 20 consecutive quarters now of lower headcount.

This just takes time to sort of do it in a methodical way where you drive just over and over and over, sort of see that benefit. I think there’s still a ton of opportunity. We still have too much excess office space across the company. We still have third-party spend that we continue to work down. In most functions across the company, I think there’s at least a little and sometimes a lot of opportunity to get more efficient. On the risk and control work, for sure, there’ll be opportunities to streamline it or make it more efficient. A lot of this work started five plus years ago, six years ago. As you look at it today, there’s always going to be opportunity to say, I can probably do that a little bit different. I can change it. I can add some technology. I can streamline it.

We can continue to evolve it. That’ll just take a little bit of time because what we want to do is continue to make sure that control work is operating the way we want it to. I think we’ll just systematically go after making it a little bit more efficient as we go. It’ll take a little time to get there.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Got it. I guess you were over 10% deposit market share in the U.S. at one point. Now you’re a bit under. I guess how do you think about either just whole bank acquisitions, bank portfolio acquisitions, or loan portfolio acquisitions, just given you now have kind of asset capacity.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Firstly, as I mentioned just a couple of minutes ago, the organic growth opportunity we have across every one of the businesses is huge, right? The majority of our time is spent thinking about how to make sure that we’re executing really, really well across each of the businesses. Could there be interesting opportunities to do something inorganic? For sure. If something comes up, we will certainly take a look at it. There will be a high bar as we sort of think about the opportunities. You can certainly think about adding capabilities from a payments or a product perspective. You could look at broader sets of things. I think it’ll have a high bar and we’ve got a lot of opportunity to continue to execute really well on the organic side.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Just related to before you get off the asset cap, you kind of mentioned trying to be more efficient, but you talked about branch builds, marketing, incentives. Are there any either just direct costs on the expense side or just capital costs using more balance sheet for financing, RWAs for trading, higher G-SIF scores that we should kind of think about when we think about the asset cap benefits?

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: There’s a lot there. I’ll try to pick it apart a little bit. I think from a capital perspective, we come into this environment with a ton of excess capital, right? I think we’ve got plenty of capital to grow our businesses and continue to buy back shares. We’re not really facing any constraints to think about at this point there. I’m sure we’ll talk about capital rules later, but I think all that is pretty manageable as well. When you start thinking about other opportunities to invest, as I said earlier, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to drive efficiency. That’s where we start the conversation with all of our businesses. I think as you’ve seen over the last four or five years, we’ll make the investments we think are smart for the long run across each of the businesses.

Like any business, we’ve got to keep making those investments to stay relevant and competitive and sort of go after the opportunity. I do think there’s plenty of opportunity to do both across each side.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Got it. I put up the next ARS question as we kind of delve into more of the financials. I guess loan growth trailed peers last quarter. You actually talked about some green shoots. I think, you know, kind of when we’re talking about the asset cap removal, just how you’re kind of thinking about loan growth over the balance of the year.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Yeah, look, as we came into the second half, as we talked about in July, we kind of expected to see some growth in some of the consumer portfolios and the commercial and industrial space. So far, quarter to date, that’s what we’re seeing. I think on the consumer side, as I mentioned earlier, in the auto business, we’re continuing to see that grow a little. We’re seeing card growth as we expected to see coming into the quarter, and we’re seeing growth across the CNI book, the commercial book, mostly again in the corporate investment bank, a little bit in certain pockets within the commercial bank. I’d say so far it’s progressing roughly as we thought it would as we came into the quarter.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: If we could just put up the next ARS question, maybe just shifting gears to deposits, I guess deposit growth trailed peers last quarter, though your costs kind of came down more than most, although I think Charlie on the call mentioned being more aggressive on both consumer and corporate deposits. Just maybe expand on that.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Yeah, I think our consumer deposits are behaving exactly in line and we’re pretty close to what other people are seeing. I think we’re not seeing any big change in trend there of any significance. We’re not seeing pressure from a pricing point of view on the consumer side. We’re not seeing any acceleration in mix shift. I’d say overall pretty consistent relative to what we thought it might look like on the consumer side. On the commercial side, as we talked about earlier, that’s the opportunity for sure that we can be more aggressive, more competitive as we look at opportunities. I think we’re already seeing that pipeline build across each of the businesses. I think that’ll continue. Those deposits are priced competitively like they’ve always been, but we’re not seeing that shift in any significant way at this point.

We’re pretty optimistic about what the opportunity should be over a little bit of a longer time period.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: I guess tying that together, you kind of reduced NAI expectations a couple of times this year. Most recently, despite kind of finding out the asset cap was coming off, I guess it’s kind of stable NAI, kind of still your forecast for this year, and just maybe discuss the puts and takes and obviously the Fed cuts next week, how does that impact things?

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Yeah, look, no change to that. We’re still expected to be roughly sort of in line with what we saw last year, plus or minus. That’s still the case. As I said, loans are sort of behaving largely as we kind of expected. Deposit trends are pretty stable across each of the businesses. I think we’ll ultimately see what the Fed does. As we get later into the year, like Fed cuts in the calendar year don’t have that big of an impact anymore. We still expect, you know, the pricing on commercial deposits to have a really high beta as the Fed comes down. I think there’s no change in our assumption around our ability to kind of reprice those deposits down as the Fed starts to move.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: I guess maybe looking beyond the next couple of quarters, what are some of the key considerations that you think can affect the trajectory of NAI?

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: It’s all the basics, right? Like, you know, deposits and loans really are going to drive most of it, right, in terms of where we go from here. I think when you think about NAI for us over a longer time period, it’s really all going to be about, you know, driving growth across the, you know, the franchise. On the consumer side, it’s growing that core operating checking account. It’s executing in the wealth management business to, you know, continue to build out, you know, the banking business that we do across those wealth management clients. As I talked about in the commercial business, it’s about just, you know, being very competitive for the opportunities that we want to go after. I think over a long time period, I think we’ve got a lot of opportunity to continue to grow the underlying franchise, which will help us grow NAI.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: The room thinks what it’s worth. They were right last year. I don’t know if you have any comment.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: It seems like a mixed bag here, so I don’t know. Somewhere between flat and 6%. I think that’s probably, you know, we’ll see. Maybe that’ll be our range.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: I guess the income’s been a bright spot. We’ve certainly in the past talked about investments in card, IB, trading, wealth management. Maybe discuss some of the major line items and what your expectations are.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Yeah, look, I think we’ve been very pleased with the fee growth that we’ve seen over the last couple of years. You certainly saw that when we looked at last year, right, where we saw NAI come down as we thought and that be replaced with fees almost completely. I think when you look at each of the key components, the biggest one is our investment advisory fee line. The market continues to perform pretty well. As long as the market, I think, stays up relatively where it is, I think we’ll continue to see good momentum in that fee line. I think we continue to make progress in the investment banking business. You can see our market share continue to increase as we sort of thought it would as we make the investments across that business. We’ve seen good consistent performance now for at least a couple of years.

I’ve lost track on the number of quarters, but at least a couple of years in our markets business where we continue to see really good performance there. I think as you start looking at the deposit and deposit line, fee line, and the lending fee line, I think as the business continues to grow, I think, and we’ve seen good performance across the consumer businesses, I think you’ve seen really good overall solid performance there. I think each of the line items have their own individual drivers, but I think the momentum that we’ve seen across each of the businesses is encouraging.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: You mentioned kind of growth in the markets business. There’s obviously a fee component and an NAI component, which I think has kind of just played into some of the changes in NAI. How do you think about that balancing? That’s something we got questions on.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Yeah, look, I think ultimately you’re building like a business, right? The accounting geography of it sometimes lands in places like NAI or fees, depending on what the underlying activity level looks like. I think we’re really focused on making sure we grow the right business over a long period of time. We’ll continue to evolve how we sort of explain the drivers of it when the markets business becomes a little bit of a bigger driver of the overall company. I think when you look at the markets business now, for the last three, four, or five years, the performance has been clear and consistent, right? The run rate of fee revenue that we’ve generated in that business has taken a step up over the last couple of years, and that continues to be very consistent and see growth there as well.

I think we’re overall really pleased with the underlying performance there. As we sort of are engaging even more, even a little bit differently since the asset cap has been gone with clients, the receptivity to do more with us is really there. We’re really pleased with what we’re seeing with clients. I think they see the capabilities that we’ve been building and the people we have, and I think they want to do more with us.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: On the expense front, you’ve talked to kind of little change in expenses for this year. Is that still the case? You talked a bit more about a lot more to rationalize the company. Kind of where are you in that?

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: No change to this year. I think, as I said earlier, it’s just a matter of continually, quarter after quarter, looking at the opportunity that we have to make the place more efficient and doing that in a way that’s sustainable and just building it into the culture of the company. I think the opportunity is there. If we could go faster on elements of it, we do, we will. Some of it just takes time to sort of get after. If anybody wants a couple of office buildings in certain cities, I have them, so call me. I think it just takes some time to kind of work through that in a very methodical way.

I think we look at it and you go to a town hall setting and sort of the company, and you ask a room like this and say, how many people think the company is as efficient as it should be? Nobody raises their hand still yet. That shows you the opportunity that’s there, despite how much progress we’ve made already. I think we still think there’s a lot more to do there. Again, it’s just one after the other. There’s no silver bullet. It just takes time. It’s hundreds of different projects that happen at any given point. I think we’re really excited that we’re going to continue to see that opportunity come into the numbers.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: I guess efficiency ratios have kind of been running 63%, 64% for the last several quarters. I guess where do you see the kind of longer term opportunity?

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: I think, as the returns of the company get better and better, you’ll see the efficiency ratio continue to come down. We’ll talk at some point about what we think the right number is there, but I think you’ll continue to see that progress as the overall performance of the company continues to get better and better. I think the efficiency ratio is a little bit of an output, right, relative to when the rest of the place is performing to the way you want. As we’ve said about returns, we’re getting closer and closer to that sustainable, like 15% return. Arguably, we’re not that far away. I think people may have a slightly different view of exactly where we are, but we’re pretty close. As we said, that’s not the end goal.

As we sort of continue to make the progress there, I think you’ll see the efficiency ratio come down in line.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Got it. Maybe just on credit quality, it has been kind of relatively stable, actually lower to where we were at in the last quarter. Just, you know, how do you think about MPAs, charge-offs, allowance, and the current backdrop? There’s still kind of some of these tariffs and other uncertainties out there. I assume our non-farm payroll number last Friday caught some attention.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Yeah, so far so good, right? I think when you look at performance, as I said on the credit side, on the consumer side, delinquency rates are not going up. Payment rates on cards are still high. We’re not seeing a trend change there really at all. The same thing on the commercial side, we’re just not seeing that trend change. It’s performing quite well. The place we continue to spend time on, kind of working through, is the office space. Even there, I think it appears like valuations are stabilizing. It appears like that’s kind of beginning to get a little bit better in some markets as well. I think overall we felt really good about how the portfolio’s performing. We’re not seeing signs that that trend’s going to change significantly at this point.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: I guess maybe on capital, you know, share buybacks have been running at $3-4 billion a quarter for the last several quarters now. SCB comes down next month. Asset cap now lifted. Just kind of how do we think about that pace of capital return?

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Yeah, look, as I said earlier, you come into this environment feeling really good, right? We’ve got a lot of excess capital. Our stress capital buffer comes down. We’re managing to a lower regulatory minimum, plus our regulatory buffers. I think we’ve got a lot of capacity to fund growth as we look at the overall balance sheet. That’s always going to be the first priority, making sure that we continue to support clients, support the overall economy, grow in a sensible, methodical way. We go through the same process every quarter, thinking about that growth opportunity over a longer time period. We look at all the risks that are out there in the environment. I think we then have share buybacks. Hopefully, you’ve seen us not be shy about returning capital to shareholders.

I think over the last five years, we’ve done something like $75 billion, $77 billion of return back to shareholders over the time. Our share count’s down 22% or so through the end of the second quarter. So far this quarter, we’ve bought back about $5.5 billion of stock, a little bit higher than what you saw in the first half of the year. We’ll continue to go through that same process as we look each quarter.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: On the topic of capital, beyond the stress test, there are obviously other changes being talked about on your capital requirements. Maybe your thoughts in terms of timing, when do you think we hear on that? How do you think that evolves?

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: I think, based on what you read and see in the conversations we have, there are really a few different levers that are out there that are being talked about. You have all of the enhancements they’re making to CCAR and the stress testing process. We expect to see more information around model transparency, scenario transparency shortly, like in the fall at some point, hopefully in the next month or so. That’ll help us get a better sense of where that’s going. Hopefully what that does is at a minimum kind of reduces some of the volatility that we’ve seen in CCAR over the last number of years. I think that’ll be encouraging. When you start looking at the other pieces of capital, you have G-SIB score reform, you have leverage, and then capital requirements, and then you have the finalization of Basel III ultimately.

The leverage changes are kind of the furthest down the path. We’ll see when they get finalized, but I think it’s encouraging that there’ll be some reform there that creates more leverage capacity in the system over a long time period. On G-SIB and Basel III, based on the conversations, based on the public speeches, it feels like that’s going to get to a reasonable place. Hopefully we’ll learn more later this year, early next year. I would guess it’s probably early next year before we have good clarity on the next iteration of what the proposal is going to look like. It all feels like it’s moving in the right direction. I think when you look at our situation, again, we come in with a lot of excess. I think our business mix sets us up well for whatever reform that’s there that happens. We’ll see where that goes.

It’s all encouraging and moving in a direction where you get some really reasonable outcomes, which I think is what everyone’s looking for.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: I guess you noted earlier, I think you’re still selling, I think you said 14 businesses to kind of further simplify the company, 13 or 13 businesses. One of them was the rail equipment leasing announcement you made not that long ago. Is there still stuff to get done to further simplify the company? How do you think?

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: No, I mean, that’s really the last, you know, one of any significance. It’s something we highlighted a couple of years ago, you know, as we sort of went through the process. We were happy to get that announced. It’s not closed yet, but it was nice to get that announced.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Got it. Maybe we could put up the next ARS question. You touched on this earlier, Mike, in terms of kind of 15 mid-teens ROTCE is kind of the waypoint and you’re almost there. I guess maybe when do you come back and revisit us? Where is that target at? What informs you and kind of what that number could be? Maybe just kind of one of the bigger areas of upside to get to that higher number.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: I’m just going to take the answer to the question, like the last one. We’ll see.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Hopefully it’s in the meantime.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: I think, you know, when you look at the return, the journey we’ve been on, like we started back at 8%, you know, I think at the end of 2020, early 2021. We sort of methodically built our way up to a target of 10. We set a target of 15. We said when we got to 15 and we thought it was sustainable, that we would set the next target from there. Arguably pretty close to that target. When you look at each of the underlying businesses, we still very much believe that each of those should have a path to best-in-class returns by business. That would lead you to a number higher than 15, ultimately. As we feel like we’re there at the 15, we’ll set a target from there.

There’s still nothing in the underlying businesses that lead us to believe that that’s not still the case, right? I think we have scale in every one of the businesses we want to be in. We’re in the best market in the world and we’re over-concentrated in the best market in the world. As you look at the financial services fee pool and revenue pool, I think we feel really good about our position and we’ll build on what we’ve been doing.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: The audience answer is 17, looks like the consensus, followed by 18. New target 17 to 18%.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Feedback’s a gift.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Yeah, we can roll it out early next year. Perfect.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Feedback is a gift.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: If you guys look last year, like every IRS question was exactly right, including the NAI guide and the asset cap list timing. We have a couple more minutes. I don’t know if there’s any questions from the audience. The question was on credit card profitability and the expected projection.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Yeah, look, I think when you look at the credit card business, we’ve seen good growth in outstandings. That hasn’t contributed much yet to overall profitability as you’ve got the intro APRs, marketing costs, CISL accounting, that sort of mutes the profitability impact in the beginning as you’re in this growth phase. I think over the next couple of years, you’ll start to see that more meaningfully impact the bottom line. Everything’s progressing as we thought it would. As you look at the overall profile, I think we’re very happy with the credit profile, the customers we’re bringing on. We can see the engagement that we’re getting across those different products. I think you’ll start to see that be a more meaningful contributor over the next couple of years.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Other questions? I guess another topic throughout the conference has kind of just been the role of private credit. You guys formed an interesting venture, I think it was last year, maybe the year before, around that. Let me just talk to kind of how that works out, kind of been focused in that space.

Mike Santomassimo, Chief Financial Officer, Wells Fargo: Yeah, look, I think one, you know, we do a lot with, you know, private credit providers. We provide financing, you know, out of our Corporate Investment Bank. We also formed, as you sort of highlighted, an initiative with, you know, Centerbridge Partners, where we provide financing to commercial bank customers or middle market customers, you know, that need it. I’d say that, you know, that’s been up and running now for a little over a year, maybe about 15 months where it’s up and running. We’ve seen really good, really good takeup. I think the momentum has been building very, very methodically and consistently now for the last, you know, number of quarters. What we’re finding is that it’s complementing what we want to do with those customers already.

We’re able to go to our customers and offer them, you know, it could be a revolver, it could be a first out tranche, it could be some kind of, you know, on balance, you know, an asset-based loan that we have on our balance sheet. We complement that with a term loan that’s provided by the JV, which is called Overland Advisors. It allows us to have a full suite of capabilities and products for the customer. We’re actually, customers are very much finding that differentiated where we’re able to provide, you know, the solutions across the capital stack. You know, so far so good. I think there’ll be a lot of opportunity for us to continue to execute while there. You know, work with, you know, private credit providers, compete where we think we want to compete.

I think, you know, we feel really good about our ability to do both, right, where it can be quite complementary to the overall set of capabilities that we have.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Great. With that, please join me in thanking Mike Santomassimo for his time today.

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