A year of growth and change for U.S. Bank meant a promotion for Gunjan Kedia.
In June, Jim Kelligrew stepped down from his position as vice chair of corporate and commercial banking. Kedia was tapped by bank CEO Andrew Cecere to replace Kelligrew, while at the same time retaining her position as vice chair of wealth management and investment services.
Cecere made the move "because it embeds institutional clients and the products that serve them in one place," Kedia said.
Kedia's expanded role was a nod to how she has grown the wealth management and investments division since taking it over in 2016. In 2022, for example, the division's revenue grew 30% to $4.1 billion.
Part of the growth is attributed to the 2021 acquisition of PFM Asset Management. Kedia also pointed to technological advancements in the firm that make financial transactions easier to complete.
For example, under Gunjan's leadership the team migrated 10,000 client accounts from an outdated custody platform to a modern SEI Wealth Platform.
Gunjan leads multiple businesses, including wealth management, corporate and commercial, commercial real estate, global markets, asset management, global corporate trust and fund services business.
She is in charge of roughly half of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank's total deposits and about half of the lender's average loan balances. Her team includes 11,100 employees.
According to Kedia, her first priority when she assumed her expanded role was putting together a team of senior leaders.
"The most important thing leaders do is to design the structure of the team around them," Kedia said.
Kedia's internal promotions include Jimmy Whang as the new head of global capital markets and and Scott Ford as the new president of wealth management.
Kedia, who grew up in India, demands diversity in her senior leaders. "Not just in demographics, though that's very important to us, but also a diversity in lived experiences and subject matter expertise."
Another key task for the banking executive is meeting with employees, clients and investment analysts across the country. In these travels, Kedia said that she will explain her new role and the ramifications of U.S. Bank's acquisition of Union Bank.
That deal, which closed in December, brings in clientele mostly from California, Oregon and Washington, areas where U.S. Bank previously had a small presence.
Kedia is also encouraged by the greater diversity of clients from Union Bank, whose corporate headquarters had been in Tokyo. "Multiculturalism was front and center at Union Bank," Kedia said.
Kedia believes that diversity is important to the next generation of investors. In August, she presented the findings of a survey of 3,000 young wealth investors the bank put together with Edelman. Kedia said that she was struck by the lack of confidence in younger investors who have gone through the turbulence of not just the pandemic, but crashes in cryptocurrency.
Financial advisors, she said, help Gen Z investors who lament they are "overloaded with information."
