Saul Van Beurden, currently CEO of consumer and small business banking at Wells Fargo, will lead AI for the company. In addition, Kleber Santos, currently CEO of Consumer lending, will take on expanded responsibilities and serve as co-CEO of consumer banking and lending with Van Beurden.
Santos and Van Beurden have been working closely for some time to deliver a seamless experience for consumers; therefore, naming them co-CEOs and combining the businesses formally is a natural out-growth of how they work today. The partnership will also allow Van Beurden to spend a meaningful portion of his time driving AI across the company.
“Generative and agentic AI will reshape competitive dynamics across every industry, and we are embracing these tools as we have embraced robotic process automation and machine learning for years,” Charlie Scharf, chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo, said. “The past year has been exciting as our world-class technology team has led us in building the technical foundation, training over 90,000 employees, deploying AI tools to over 180,000 desktops and we are now beginning to implement use cases more broadly.
Scharf added, “Success will be driven by business heads embracing these new technologies and rethinking their own operating models using generative and agentic AI solutions. Saul will partner with our business leaders to ensure they are leading their own transformation and will be accountable to me for consistent and meaningful progress across the company.
Scharf concluded, “I have often said that we have one of the most enviable financial services franchises in the world. We have a breadth of consumer and commercial products that few can match. The advances in AI have given us a once in a lifetime opportunity to transform how we work and we are excited by what we can deliver for our employees, customers and communities.”
