Wells Fargo & CO’s (NYSE: WFC) Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network will be expanding its regional markets out of the Midwest to include the Southwest, South Pacific, Great Lakes and New England regions.
“We’ve grown because we stand at the intersection of full-service investment services and local control, which is an attractive place for successful financial advisors who want to own and operate their own business,” said John Peluso, president of WFAFN.
WFAN added 160 financial advisers to its network, known as FiNet, during 2009, to expand its total brokerage force to 830 independent advisers with about $40 billion in assets. Although the FiNet group is growing, it still remains a relatively small division of Wells Fargo’s Wealth, Brokerage & Retirement group, which has a total of $1.1 trillion in client assets and more than 15,000 advisers.
The independent broker-dealer relationship that Wells Fargo offers advisers has become increasingly attractive to financial advisers that have looked to get away from major brokerages and become independent. FiNet advisers operate on an open-architecture environment, which allows them to have control over the types of products and the money managers that they hire, but still have access to Wells Fargo’s wirehouse platform that its on-staff advisers enjoy.
Wells Fargo & Co has brought on new regional directors which will be responsible for fueling growth in their respected regions and with existing WFAN partners to help them service their clients.
