Wells Fargo has named Kleber Santos the sole chief executive of its consumer banking and lending business as Saul Van Beurden, the former co-CEO of that segment, moves to a full-time artificial intelligence role, the bank announced Thursday.
Van Beurden was tapped to scale artificial intelligence at Wells last year. The bank has “significant opportunities to grow our consumer businesses and to use AI to transform how we operate and serve our customers,” CEO Charlie Scharf said in a prepared statement Thursday.
“Kleber and Saul have built strong momentum in both areas, and having each focus fully on these priorities will help us accelerate that progress,” he said.
Santos will take on full responsibility for consumer banking and lending, including consumer deposits, credit cards, business banking and auto lending. Van Beurden will focus, still, on scaling AI adoption enterprise-wide, including deepening Wells’ work with AI firms.
Their respective appointments are effective immediately, according to a spokesperson.
“We're devoting significant management time and resources to building AI capabilities and drive value,” Scharf said on Wells’ third-quarter earnings call Oct. 13.
“Over the past year, this has gone from being a tool to assist programmers to now being able to use autonomous agents when appropriate, to increase capacity and revenue from our branches, to launch marketing campaigns faster, to help identify as well as write and test code to close previously unknown cyber vulnerabilities and to improve and simplify risk management processes,” he said.
Externally, Wells is using AI to improve customer experience by helping them make payments, replace cards, and get spending insights; and to accelerate the pace of underwriting decisions and customer complaint responses, Scharf said.
More banks have been establishing full-time AI roles of late, indicative of the technology’s presumed value.
Jasmine de Gaia, Wells’ head of AI and enterprise data assets, will become Scotiabank’s chief AI officer – a new role for the Canadian lender – on Jan. 4, according to the Financial Post.
Wells, for its part, increased its ranking on the Evident AI index for banks to No. 5 globally and No. 3 in the U.S. based on banks’ talent, innovation, leadership and transparency related to the technology.
“We're excited by the opportunities AI presents for our clients and our company, and we're taking a disciplined approach to managing risk,” Scharf said during the earnings call.
