Wells Fargo 2011 Annual Report Download - page 9

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Hewas so happy with the process and our
service, he opened two more business accounts.
When he decided to expand his business, the
same team helped him finance a $3.5million
loan. When we delight our customers and help
them succeed financially, great things happen.
Another example can be found in San
Francisco’s Mission District, where many low-
income immigrant women sell food from their
homes or in the streets to help support their
families. To help these women organize and
grow their businesses, a nonprofit business
incubator called La Cocina was started in 2005.
WellsFargo provided an equity equivalent,
or EQ2 (below-market rate), loan of $500,000
to get it started. As La Cocina grew, we
helped arrange another $500,000 loan and,
later, another $300,000 loan. La Cocina is
now recognized as a national model for
moving low-income and immigrant women
entrepreneurs into the formal economy. It’s
home for several women-owned businesses,
generating $2million in annual revenue and
creating jobs in the community.
3. Reducing expenses
From WellsFargo’s Vision & Values:
“We’re making expense management a
competitive advantage — just like our people,
cross-sell, our solid capital position, our strong
balance sheet, and credit discipline.”
We have the privilege and responsibility to
use our shareholders’ capital as eciently and
eectively as possible so we can give them
asolid, long-term return on their investment.
That means managing our expenses well —
notcutting costs just for the sake of it, but
making sure everything we do is as ecient
and simple as possible. We should spend
money only on what really matters to our
customers and on things that help us grow
revenue. Weneed to cut costs, but not corners,
when it comes to doing things right and doing
therightthings.
Through our current companywide
expense initiative, we want to become more
cost-competitive and nimble by streamlining
processes and eliminating unnecessary
expense. This work is moving forward on two
fronts. First, we’re identifying cross-company
opportunities that remove complexity,
eliminate duplication, and take more of a
companywide view of how we work. Second,
each of our individual businesses is looking
closely at how they do their work. For example,
we’ve identified technology, human resources,
and marketing functions that were handled
in separate areas, and we’re bringing them
together to serve the company more eciently.
We combined our two separate automobile
finance businesses to better serve customers.
We simplified our Wealth Management
regional structure to operate seven instead of
12regions. Our businesses reduced the number
of temporary resources and contractors in
high-cost locations by 29percent in 2011.
Reducing expenses also helps us achieve
other goals. During the merger integration
with Wachovia, we converted many of our retail
banking stores to more ecient “green” signs,
saving a lot of money for the company and our
shareholders. We installed 7,000 LED signs
coast to coast, saving an estimated $1.5million
in reduced energy and maintenance costs.
As part of our current expense initiative,
we set a target to reduce our quarterly
noninterest expenses to $11billion in the fourth
quarter of 2012. That means reducing our
quarterly noninterest expense by $1.5billion,
or 12percent, from the amount of noninterest
expenses we incurred in the second quarter of
2011, when we set our expense target. We’re on
the right track to reach that goal.
4. Living our Vision & Values
From WellsFargo’s Vision & Values: “We have
what it takes to be great. One vision. Shared
values that we live. A well-understood and
eective culture. A time-tested business model …
And most of all: great people.”
Living our Vision & Values is about trust,
personal responsibility, working together,
admitting mistakes when we make them, and
making things right for our customers. Whether
you’re a bank teller, a relationship manager,
a computer programmer, or a leader of one
of our business groups, these are the values
thatguideus.
We also value — and learn from — the
diversity of team members, customers, and
communities. We promote an environment that
embraces and values dierences, encouraging
diversity in our business practices. This
gives us multiple perspectives to respond to
5.92 products
Retail bank household cross-sell
reached a record 5.92products in
2011, up from 5.70 in the fourth
quarter of 2010.
$13.8 billion
In 2011, WellsFargo grew Tier1
common equity1 by $13.8billion,
highest among the four largest
U.S. banks by assets.
$1.5 million
We installed 7,000 LED signs
coast to coast, saving an estimated
$1.5million in reduced energy
and maintenance costs.