Wells Fargo closures to have ‘minimal’ impact on Southern Nevada jobs

Wells Fargo & Co.’s plans to cut nearly one in seven U.S. branches by 2020 will have a limited effect on its presence in the Southern Nevada region, a local bank official said Wednesday.

The region’s rapidly growing economy is creating greater demand for consumer credit and small-business loans, said Brian Formisano, the lender’s region president for Southern Nevada overseeing community banking.

The San Francisco-based bank may close several of its existing 74 Southern Nevada branches as part of the 2020 strategy, but new ones could be opened in underserved regions, offsetting the total decline, he said.

“Our branch count could reduce, but if we do go forward, it will have an extremely minimal impact to our network. There are several areas of this town that call for branch growth,” Formisano said Tuesday.

Largest network

The third-largest U.S. lender by assets plans to reduce its branch network to 5,000 from 5,800 over the next three years as more clients shift towards online banking, Wells Fargo executives said Friday during a year-end earning’s call.

Branch closures are an industrywide trend, and Wells Fargo is the most affected because it has the largest U.S. network, said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at personal-finance website Bankrate.com.

“This is a trend that will persist for a number of years. Increasingly, branch locations will be a sales floor and not a place to conduct transactions,” he said. “People don’t want to have to go to the bank.”

Wells Fargo has nearly 50 percent more branches in Southern Nevada than Bank of America, one of its top competitors.

Bank of America, which reduced its presence in the region after the financial crisis, plans to open two more branches this year, at Anthem Village Center and Ashley Park Plaza, bringing its Southern Nevada total to 52.

No job cuts

Employees at Southern Nevada community branches chosen for closure would be transferred to other locations, Formisano said. Community bank headcount, which exceeds 1,200, would not be reduced, he said.

“We are not laying off any retail team members. If we look to reduce our branch count, then those those team members are absorbed into other branch locations.’’

Wells Fargo will train employees for other positions as it deploys more technology inside the branch, Formisano said. The bank recently has installed seven “assisted” ATMs in Nevada branches that can handle more transactions traditionally performed by tellers, such as cashing checks down to the penny.

The lender, which has more than 300 ATMs statewide, will increase the number of assisted ATMs this year. The assisted ATMs do not yet handle money orders and cashier checks, which are popular requests, Formisano said.

Pay raise, faster loans

After the passage of the corporate tax cut last month, the lender announced plans to raise its hourly minimum wage to $15. The increase will affect several hundred employees in Southern Nevada and be effective by the second quarter, Formisano said.

Despite being the largest bank in the region by deposits and branch network size, Wells Fargo is only fourth in home equity loans, he said.

He is hoping to change that by streamlining the loan application process to make it “less painful,” for customers.

“Our home equity processing was not as quick as we wanted it to be. We beefed up our processing department up so that we could cut wait time,” Formisano said.

Getting approved for a loan can take as long as 60 days. Formisano said he would like to cut that in half.

“Utopia would be inside 30 days.’’

Contact Todd Prince at tprince@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0386. Follow @toddprincetv on Twitter.