Wells Fargo launches one-stop banking portal for business clients

Wells Fargo is rolling out a new online portal starting Monday where commercial and corporate clients can navigate personalized financial services like capital management. 

The digital banking portal, Vantage, creates customized experiences for clients ranging from early-stage startups to global corporations. Wells Fargo is launching Vantage as client demand for digital solutions, self-service options and tailored solutions rises, said Reetika Grewal, executive vice president and head of digital transformation at the bank.

"Times have changed. Customer expectations for what their digital experiences are have changed dramatically," Grewal said in an interview. "People really are focused on, 'How do I self-serve? How do I move in and out quickly?' This is a move toward that client-centric experience that people are expecting on the commercial banking and corporate and investment banking side."

Vantage can modulate the services it offers based on a specific client, using artificial intelligence to analyze factors such as company size and a user's position within the company. Other banking giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup offer services that overlap with Vantage, like online capital management for corporate and commercial clients, but Grewal said Wells Fargo differentiates by offering a single portal to solve for clients across revenue ranges.

Wells Fargo will transition clients to Vantage over the next six months from its current commercial and corporate digital platform, Commercial Electronic Office (CEO). CEO currently generates more than 5 million logins each month, supporting tens of thousands of clients. More than $1 trillion in payments volume flows through the portal monthly, according to the bank. 

Grewal said that while CEO's core functionality is strong, it wasn't meeting client expectations around digital capabilities and customization. She added that she hopes Vantage will increase Wells Fargo's business by streamlining the process to complete complex transactions. Vantage offers widgets that are customized to each user's portal that allow them to more clearly see their priorities and capabilities. Those portals can also adjust as companies grow or evolve and their needs change. 

About 250 Wells Fargo employees were involved in the development and launch of Vantage over the last year. While the initial launch will solely be for online use, Wells Fargo is working on developing a mobile app, Grewal said, but she declined to share when that might be available. Grewal said the team also received feedback from about 500 clients as it built the portal. 

Most of the build was in-house, but Grewal said some functions will come from partnerships. Last fall, the bank announced it would invest in and partner with Trovata, a San Diego-based fintech that can automate cash reporting, forecasting and analysis for midsize and large companies. Clients using Vantage will still be able to use that service.

Grewal started at Wells Fargo about a year and a half ago; she previously worked at JPMorgan Chase and Silicon Valley Bank, among other places. She has been part of Wells Fargo's technology transformation efforts. In line with customer demand for self-service products, Wells Fargo has been developing Fargo, a virtual assistant for consumers slated to launch in the second quarter of 2023. In October the company announced it would partner with Google to use Google Assistant and Google Cloud's Dialogflow. 

The bank also announced last year that it would migrate a large portion of its workloads to the cloud using Microsoft Azure as its primary public cloud provider and Google Cloud for additional public cloud services.