Dive Brief:
- Wells Fargo has tapped Saul Van Beurden, the San Francisco-based bank’s head of technology, to succeed retiring CEO of Consumer and Small Business Banking Mary Mack, the company announced Thursday. The change will be effective May 15.
- Tracy Kerrins, currently head of consumer technology at Wells Fargo, was chosen to succeed Van Beurden as the bank’s head of technology. Kerrins and Van Beurden will serve on the company’s operating committee and report to CEO Charlie Scharf.
- Wells Fargo embarked on a 10-year digital transformation journey with Van Beurden at the helm in 2021. Kerrins led her division through a series of technology platform modernization initiatives across Consumer and Small Business Banking and Consumer Lending, Scharf said in the announcement.
Dive Insight:
The leadership change reflects Wells Fargo’s prioritization of technology in its consumer and small business banking division. CSBB serves 21 million retail bank households and three million small businesses.
“Our customers expect us to provide them with increasingly digitized and seamless banking experiences across all channels,” Scharf said in the announcement. “Saul understands this deeply and has consistently proven his ability to convert new ideas into new products and services across Wells Fargo.”
Van Beurden, a former CIO, joined Wells Fargo in 2019 as the company’s first head of technology. Prior to that, he served as CIO of consumer and community banking at JPMorgan Chase and held senior IT leadership roles at the Dutch banking and financial services firm ING Group.
Kerrins led operations and technology for a private credit manager and spent 15 years in senior technology roles at Bank of America before joining Van Beurden at Wells Fargo in 2019.
Mack leaves Wells Fargo after nearly four decades with the company.
“Mary and her leadership team have transformed the organization, and I am excited to continue the work underway while bringing in expertise in technology and data to accelerate the transformation journey,” Scharf said.
Scharf has spent the last three years digging the company out from under a series of scandals involving falsified consumer accounts and compliance failures that predated his tenure as CEO.
In CSBB, the focus was on recovery, which delayed optimization, Scharf said during a Q1 2023 earnings call Friday for the three-month period ending March 31.
“For many years after Mary got her job in the consumer banking operation, our focus was dealing with the cleanup,” Scharf said during the earnings call. “Then, we turned our attention to becoming more efficient.”
Migrating to digital was part of an efficiency push that included looking at branch footprint and staffing, said Scharf.
“We're behind on that, but there's been a lot of progress made over the last two years,” he said.
