Wells Fargo loses another executive, this time to LPL

Another senior executive has left the wealth management group at Wells Fargo & Co., the giant bank that has been overhauling its financial advice business since Charlie Scharf took the reins as CEO in 2019.

Jim McHale had been executive vice president and head of compliance at the bank's Wealth & Investment Management Division, or WIM, which includes Wells Fargo Advisors, for more than three years. He left Wells Fargo last month and is now executive vice president and chief compliance officer at LPL Financial, according to a statement from LPL Wednesday.

In the past few years, Wells Fargo has seen a steady outflow of senior managers, some respected by financial advisors and others not highly regarded. McHale's departure only confirms that changes have taken hold at the bank's wealth management group, which has seen thousands of financial advisors retire or leave for rivals since 2016, when scandals at the bank were revealed.

One Wells Fargo Advisors financial advisor was sanguine about the changes, noting that Scharf's team, led by Barry Sommers, CEO of WIM, and Sol Gindi, head of Wells Fargo Advisors, have carried through on improvements that others had failed to deliver. Both were plucked from JPMorgan Chase & Co.

"They are intentionally focusing on process and technology improvements, and actually getting them done," said the advisor, who spoke confidentially to InvestmentNews. "The old management said the same thing but was unable to deliver."

"Christos Tsamadias has taken on the role of WIM head of compliance," a spokesperson wrote in an email.

Tsamadias joined Wells Fargo from UBS in December 2021 as a risk officer supporting Wells Fargo Advisors and has over 22 years of experience in audit, risk, compliance, and monitoring and surveillance.

Senior executives at Wells Fargo have been heading to the exits as Scharf streamlines operations in wealth management and invests in technology.

John Peluso, the head of the firm's brokerage clearing operations, First Clearing, retired at the end of September. A senior managing director, Peluso had been at the firm and its various predecessors for 35 years.

Warren Terry, managing director and head of the client relationship group branch infrastructure, had his final day at the firm in July. Terry had worked at the firm since 2005. Rich Getzoff, head of the branch network since 2019, left the firm in June. He had worked at Wells Fargo and a predecessor, Prudential Securities, since 1998.

Seven years ago, Wells Fargo & Co. first reported a wave of credit card and bank scandals that harmed the bank’s reputation and led to difficult conversations with some financial advisors’ clients.

Meanwhile, other senior executives who have recently left Wells Fargo are now competing against their old firm. Jack Ginter, the former head of its private bank, called Abbot Downing, left in 2021, months before the banks said it was dropping the Abbot Downing name. Ginter opened Callan Family Office in 2022, and it had $3.5 billion in client assets as of this summer.

And a former head of Wells Fargo Advisors, David Kowach, over the summer bought a firm and launched a new broker-dealer, &Partners, which is actively hiring and recruiting financial advisors, including those from his former employer.