Wells Fargo's advisers maintain revenue despite difficult markets, shrinking head count

After showing signs of stabilizing its workforce earlier in 2022, Wells Fargo & Co. saw an uptick in the number of financial advisers leaving the wirehouse during the third quarter.

The wirehouse employed a total of 12,011 financial advisers at the end of September, according to documents published Friday as part of Wells Fargo’s quarterly earnings report. That’s a loss of 173 advisers in Q3, more than double the number of advisers lost in Q2.

Wells Fargo has lost a total of 541 advisers year over year, a decrease of 4.3%. While the company declined to share how many advisers it hired during the quarter, almost all of the net change in Q3 was driven by retirements and advisers who left the industry, according to Shea Leordeanu, a senior vice president of corporate communications at Wells Fargo.

“With our strong succession program, Wells Fargo Advisors retains the majority of client assets when an adviser retires,” Leordeanu said in a statement.

The company has strong hiring momentum and brought on twice the number of those producing at least $1 million compared to this same time last year, she added.

“Hiring into our bank-based channel is up significantly as Wells Fargo pairs Premier bankers with Wells Fargo Advisors to serve the investing needs of affluent bank customers,” said Leordeanu. “We have a strong recruiting pipeline as our multi-channel model is a powerful differentiator that allows advisors choice to manage their careers and take care of clients.”

Annualized revenue per adviser held consistent at $1.21 million compared to the previous quarter, and up from $1.14 million a year earlier, despite a challenging stock market, ongoing inflation and rising interest rates. Total revenue in Wells Fargo's wealth and investment management business fell 1% from the previous quarter but is up 1% compared to a year ago.

Wells Fargo set aside $2 billion to resolve a variety of legacy regulatory and legal woes as Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf continues wrestling with the costly fallout from scandals he was hired to resolve, according to Bloomberg.

The charge hampered a third quarter that was better than expected on some metrics. Net interest income, for example, rose 36% to $12.1 billion in the three months ended Sept. 30, the San Francisco-based bank reported. That’s the most since 2019 and better than the 31% average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

“Our top priority remains strengthening our risk and control infrastructure, which includes addressing open historical issues and issues that are identified as we advance this work,” Scharf said in the statement. “We remain at risk of setbacks as we work to complete the work and put these issues behind us.”

-- Bloomberg News contributed to this article

[Read more: CEO Scharf sees ‘several years’ of regulatory work ahead for Wells Fargo]