Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) is going to hire another 10,000 brokers going forward, according to a company spokeswoman, who confirmed the story which had been circulating since last night.
As far as the time frame this is going to happen in, there were no details issued, and it seemed it would be over a period of time, rather than something to happen in the immediate future.
This is going to be the trend of the future for major banks, who are losing revenue and profits from the many regulations imposed on them since the housing bubble and consumer outrage over fees from credit cards and other banking products.
Recently Wells Fargo has stated they were going to hire another 1,000 experienced brokers in 2010, and train another 400 from scratch. Last year the company hired approximately 1,700 brokers.
So while Wells isn’t going into details on the specifics of how long this is going to be going on, from the last couple of years, if that can be used as a measure, we could see this extend for a period of seven or eight years; assuming the pace continues on as it has been.
While Wells has focused primarily on originating loans in the past, they have had a significant adviser unit, with a reported 15,000 at the company now, which places them just behind Bank of America in that regard, which also had been the largest originator of home mortgages in the country. Morgan STanley has the largest number of brokers at this time, with over 18,000 at the firm as of this writing.
This confirms to me that the banks are looking to the investment and financial advisory side as the growth sector of the future. It also reveals they’re expecting more regulation on the retail banking side, which is unpredictable at this time as to how far it will go and how deeply it’ll cut into revenue and profits.
