EVP, Head of Community Banking, Wells Fargo
Of all that Mary Mack accomplished running Wells Fargo's brokerage operations — adding teams of new advisers in key markets, substantially improving her unit's customer satisfaction ratings — perhaps what stood out most was her group's success in attracting new business from the banking side of the house.
Mack made it her mission to foster greater collaboration with Wells' community and private banks, and those efforts started to pay off handsomely last year. Referrals from the community bank — Wells' retail and small-business customers — brought in an average of $1.1 billion of investment assets a month. Referrals from the private bank added $3.4 billion of brokerage assets, while referrals from the brokerage group helped the private bank add nearly $3 billion of high-quality loans and more than $2 billion of trust assets.
Now in her new role overseeing Wells' vast branch network, Mack is in position to further strengthen the ties between the banking and brokerage businesses. "Everything runs through the store," Mack said. "It's our brand, it's our presence in the community, it's our portal to everything we do."
Mack took over as head of Wells' community bank in July, replacing Carrie Tolstedt, who retired.
Though the move would appear to be a departure for Mack, she began her career in retail banking and held high-level banking posts at Wachovia before moving to brokerage about a dozen years ago.
Still, retail banking has changed a lot over the last 12 years, so Mack said her top priority in these first few months will be traveling around the country meeting with front-line employees to help understand what is working well and what Wells can be doing better.
"The front-line team members have the best lens on what the customers need and want," Mack said. "They talk to [customers] every day. They help solve their problems. They are one of our best sources of ideas and information."
She'll have a tough job ahead of her, as Wells works to rebuild trust with customers following revelations that branch employees opened as many as 2 million phony accounts for customers in an effort to hit sales targets. The fraud took place over a period of several years and cost more than 5,000 employees their jobs.
Wells was ordered in September to
