Hi, I was recently offered a junior year summer internship in the Wells Fargo Financial Analyst Program (Basically MM Commercial). How difficult is it to switch into Wells Fargo Securities for FT and how open is Wells in general about moving around within the company. Thanks for the help!
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I would play it close to the vest that you want to go to Wells Fargo securities, the FAP program knows it's the silver medal to IB and the most important thing is to get a return offer even if you don't want to do commercial banking long term. You definitely do not want to give your boss in the RCBO a chance to kill your return offer. and before anyone goes there even if said boss wanted to help he's almost certainly not connected enough to actually influence moving over to Wells IB.
On actually transitioning, I've seen people do it but it's not easy. I would network with I bankers over the summer, express your interest but tell nobody on the commercial banking side, again secure the return offer FIRST. Once you have the return offer in hand and the internship is over reach out to the I bankers and see if they have ft opportunities and also network with every i banker outside of Wells.
If you do all of the above, can't get an ib spot and have to go back to FAP full time, note that Wells will require you to be in your job for at least one year before transferring internally.
Key thing now and until you wrap up an IB job is to network network network. Almost every person I saw who escaped (using that word intentionally) from Wells commercial banking to IB either at Wells or somewhere else had to network relentlessly, develop their quantitive skills on their own and usually got rejected several times before finally landing an ib spot. It's definitely doable but it's hard. Also do not believe anyone at Wells who says moving to IB is easier because you'll be an internal candidate. Good luck.