Wells Fargo Announces New Risk Management Hires And Strategy

Kevin Reen and Bill Juliano, who recently worked for J.P.Morgan Chase and Santander Bank respectively, will now serve as Wells Fargo‘s new corporate risk leaders, in the company’s attempt to have better oversight going forward.

The new hires are part of an initiative to add five new chief risk officers (CRO), one each for the specific fields of Commercial Banking, Consumer & Small Business Banking, Corporate & Investment Banking, and Wealth & Investment Management businesses, a press release states.

Reen, the press release says, worked until recently as CRO for J.P.Morgan’s Card Services business. For Wells Fargo, he will act as the CRO for Consumer Lending.

Juliano, previously the Consumer and Business Banking CRO and U.S. Chief Operational Risk Officer at Santander Bank, will serve as the leader of the Operational Risk team for Wells Fargo.

Both men, along with the other CROs when hired, will report to Wells Fargo CRO Mandy Norton.

Norton, in the press release, says the new hires, and the upcoming ones not yet announced, would “better position [the bank] for the future.”

“We have made — and continue to make — transformative changes to our risk management structure and practices, including important work to provide greater oversight of all risk-taking activities and a more comprehensive view of risk across the company,” he said, according to the press release. “These organizational changes further those efforts and increase our ability to effectively execute our top priorities, including our critical risk, regulatory, and control work.”

The bank will also be shifting its operations so that other teams, organized by risk type and governance, will report to Norton as well, the release states. Enterprise testing, a critical function, will be elevated in status due to its crucial nature, and also report to Norton.

The changes come as Wells Fargo tries to rehabilitate its image after it came out last year that employees had been creating millions of fake accounts under peoples’ names to meet quotas. In February, the bank agreed to pay $3 billion to settle with regulators and close the case.