Wells Fargo plans to try out an RIA model in a handful of test markets in 2019, according to media outlets.
In a keynote presentation on the future of financial planning at the annual MarketCounsel Summit, Wells Fargo Advisors president David Kowach said the firm would “test the RIA business.”
The new platform may help the bank with certain negative offsets. Several teams of advisers have left the firm in 2018 to launch their own independent RIAs. Wells said in its most recent earnings report that it had 14,074 total financial advisers on staff at the end of the third quarter of 2018, down from 14,226 in the second quarter of 2018 and down from 14,564 at the end of the third quarter of 2017. The firm had 15,086 advisers on staff at the end of the third quarter of 2016.