WellsFargo.com: Wells Fargo Banking, Financial, Home Mortgages
Wells Fargo [ www.wellsfargo.com ] (NYSE: WFC) is a diversified financial services company in the United States, with consumer finance subsidiaries doing business in Canada, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Caribbean. Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) and its subsidiaries provide banking, insurance, investments, mortgage banking, and consumer finance in the United States and internationally. WellsFargo ha it’s headquaters in San Francisco and it’s a result of the acquisition of California-based Wells Fargo & Company by Minneapolis-based Norwest Corporation in 1998. Norwest changed its name to Wells Fargo in 2000.
The company operates in three major segments: Community Banking, Wholesale Banking, and Wells Fargo Financial.
Wells Fargo Community Banking / Retail Banking
The Wells Fargo Community Banking segment offers various products and services, which include the Wells Fargo Funds, a family of mutual funds, as well as personal trust, employee benefit trust, and agency assets. Loan products include lines of credit, equity lines and loans, equipment and transportation loans, and education loans. It also originates and purchases residential mortgage loans, and services mortgage loans and credit cards. The segment’s deposit products include checking accounts, savings deposits, market rate accounts, individual retirement accounts, and time deposits. Wells Fargo Community Banking segment also offers receivables and inventory financing, equipment leases, real estate financing, small business administration financing, venture capital financing, cash management, payroll services, retirement plans, medical savings accounts, and credit and debit card processing. Wells also has around 400 stand alone mortgage branches throughout the country. This division also contains the Wells Fargo stock brokers (called “private client services”).
Wells Fargo Wholesale Banking
The WellsFargo Wholesale Banking provides commercial, corporate, and real estate banking products and services, including letters of credit, asset-based lending, equipment leasing, mezzanine financing, high-yield debt, international trade facilities, foreign exchange services, treasury management, investment management, institutional fixed income and equity sales, online/electronic products, insurance brokerage services, and investment banking services. It also provides trade financing and collection services. This segment also offers construction loans for commercial and residential development, land acquisition and development loans, interim financing arrangements for completed structures, rehabilitation loans, housing loans, permanent loans for securitization, commercial real estate loan servicing, and real estate and mortgage brokerage services. The Wells Fargo Wholesale Banking segment offers consumer and real estate loans to individuals; purchases sales finance contracts from retail merchants and sales finance contracts from automobile dealers; and makes loans secured by automobiles. It also provides credit cards and lease, and other commercial financing. As of December 31, 2004, the company served approximately 23 million customers through 6,046 stores, the Internet, and other distribution channels. Wells Fargo also owns the first and largest “real estate investment bank”, which assists commercial property owners in obtaining funds in the capital markets, as opposed to direct lending by Wells Fargo itself.
Wells Fargo Financial / Consumer Finance
WFC was organized in 1929 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Wells Fargo Financial engages in sub prime lending through 1284 branches throughout the country and in certain foreign countries. Sub prime lending is lending to people with bad or poor credit histories, charging a higher interest rate due to the higher risk. This division also engages in “indirect lending” for things such as furniture stores (so that customers can obtain financing to buy furniture right in the furniture store).
Summary
Wells Fargo & Company is a diversified financial services company with $428 billion in assets, providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance from more than 6,000 stores, the internet (www.wellsfargo.com), and other distribution channels across North America and elsewhere internationally. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is the only “Aaa”- rated bank in the United States.
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