Wells Fargo Shareowner Services

An Interview With Todd May

What are your goals around serving clients?

When it comes right down to it we see our role as a way to save our clients’ resources. By effectively serving their shareowners we reduce the number of phone calls and emails our contacts need to personally address.

Taking that a step further, if we help initiate investment plans or execute corporate actions, we can help clients connect with their most important constituents. We may save them time and money, and even help protect their companies from risk. This year we are focusing on increasing the usage of our shareowner website and also the adoption of eDelivery. Increasing the usage of online statements, forms, and documents is a direct way we can help our clients save significant costs associated with mailings.

How do you ensure consistent service?

Our culture is tied to being helpful and consultative. The industry tenure on our team is incredible. Our relationship and operations managers are true industry experts. They are able to advise companies on the most effective methods of managing their shareowner base.

We also focus on transactional excellence. Strict monitoring tools track activities within operations and the contact center to an exacting level. Ensuring accuracy and managing workflow are critical to delivering on our service promise.

With many banks having exited the business, why does Wells Fargo stay in it?

Wells Fargo is foremost a relationship bank. Our mission is to satisfy all our customers’ financial needs and help them succeed financially. How better to do this than serving those who are most important to our corporate clients – their shareowners. This view is driven from the bank’s executive management throughout the organization.

Wells Fargo’s commitment translates into business investments. We made major technology enhancements last year and we will be moving our headquarters to a larger space in 2012.

You talk about being a relationship business; what does that really mean?

In short it means that we value the client’s entire relationship with Wells Fargo. We aren’t just delivering transfer agent services; we’re reinforcing their company’s decision to work with Wells Fargo. This means that we are committed to delivering expert and consultative service and we want our clients to use the products that best meet their goals and objectives.

Our relationship focus is evident in the way we attract and retain clients. We do so by understanding their needs and delivering great service. That is how a relationship business should work.

Are there benefits of being a bank-owned transfer agent?

There are so many benefits – even beyond the relationships we already discussed. Our customers benefit from bank controls, balancing, regulatory involvement, and even ancillary products best delivered by a financial institution.

Being part of a bank, we are audited multiple times in a given year. These audits help us maintain multiple checkpoints making sure we are managing compliance and risk.

Not only do we have direct access to a multitude of investment options, we deliver seamless escrow and paying/exchange agent services to clients executing M&A transactions.

After last year’s website releases – what has the feedback been?

The efforts to enhance our issuer and shareowner websites last year were remarkable. Our team benefited from client
feedback during the sites’ creation. We also worked closely with the teams responsible for Wells Fargo’s award-winning online banking and Commercial Electronic Office® sites.

The response has been tremendous. With less than a year between our website deployments and this year’s survey efforts, increases in issuer website satisfaction were in excess of 20% from last year. We’ve seen a 34% increase of users to that site as well.

Feedback around Shareowner Online has also been very positive with marked satisfaction increases over last year. With future releases, clients and shareowners will continue to see additional tools and functionality.

Your business keeps growing – how are you accommodating that growth?

Yes, we do continue to realize steady growth in our client base, but that growth has been deliberate and planned. Over the past few years our operations capacity has increased exponentially as we began to more fully leverage bank-wide capabilities. Take our mailing facilities. This group creates nearly three billion impressions annually and can easily accommodate our growth. This same principle extends throughout our business. From mail and technology services to trading execution, we operate within a highly-sophisticated infrastructure.

We appreciate each client’s business and have taken the necessary steps to ensure that our growth does not negatively impact them – it will help us serve them even better.

How does your team stay current on new regulation? Wells Fargo recognizes the importance of being involved in the communities we serve. This stance is vital to ensuring preparedness during times of industry change.

As a world-leading diversified financial services company, Wells Fargo works to effect and adapt to change at a global level.

Within Shareowner Services we are very involved in industry associations and committees. The Shareholder Services Association, Stock Transfer Association, and Cost Basis Reporting Service (CBRS) Committee are just a few examples.

As part of the Wells Fargo enterprise we also have the advantage of working with other lines of business. We certainly weren’t the only Wells Fargo business to prepare for cost basis implications. Instead, we were able to share best practices and even leverage Wells Fargo’s corporate tax professionals for guidance.

How can companies actively manage their registered shareholder base?

That question perpetually circulates this space. There is little doubt that it is important for issuers to manage their registered shareholders. We have the tools and expertise to help companies maintain, grow, or reduce their registered base as dictated by their strategy.

For companies looking to attract shareowners, we have found great vehicles in investment plans such as direct stock purchase plans and employee stock purchase plans. These plans are customized to reach the issuer’s goals. With our new Shareowner Online website, shareowners can easily manage their accounts and make additional investments.

Encouraging dividend reinvestment and electronic delivery of statements, tax forms, and communications can also help
companies save related costs.

Conversely, for companies interested in reducing their shareowner base, we offer effective share sale and odd lot programs.

What’s next for Wells Fargo Shareowner Services?

Each year we focus on implementing changes that improve the value we add to clients and their shareowners – 2012 will be no different.

For certain transactions, we are introducing policy changes that will reduce the number of rejected shareowner requests. We are pleased that these changes will improve satisfaction without compromising our risk standards.

We will continue to make technology enhancements. These range from added IVR capabilities for shareowners who call us to ongoing releases to our websites.

Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, our team will be moving to a larger headquarters building. Not only will our headquarters still house a service counter for walk-in shareowners, but it also puts us less than a mile from our Shareowner Relations contact center in Mendota Heights, Minn. This move is symbolic of Wells Fargo’s dedication to this business and my team’s dedication to the clients of Wells Fargo Shareowner Services.