Wells Fargo Commercial to IB

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!

 

Dependent on which group you are trying to get within IB. Most of their team is in Charlotte with some in NYC/ SF. If you aren't in any of these 3 cities it will be very difficult simply because there is on one to network with.

 
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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.

 

The corporate banking guys are actually a lot closer to their IB counter parts than commercial banking I'd probably not announce my plans until you have the return offer in hand. Seems like a lot of downside and not a lot of upside as I'm not sure how much corporate bankers can help push for one of their interns to get a full time analyst spot (assuming there are even ft slots andWF securities doesn't fill all their ft slots from their summer analyst program)

 

Just wanted to second networking with WFS, especially with alumni from your school if any, and expressing interest! Someone’s good word about you is definitely taken into consideration.

But keep in mind that WFS seems to do a pretty good job of determining how many SAs they’ll need to convert to FT early on so that they aren’t looking for FT candidates (at least in my group, I got the impression that they wanted to give everyone an offer and planned on replacing the people that don’t get offers for FT, many times from another WFS group). I wouldn’t put all your eggs in this one basket by any means.

 

I started with the Wells Corporate Banking Group about 2 years ago and just recently moved across the country to take an IB Coverage Role with WFS about 6 months ago. I'd say Wells is pretty receptive to this kind of internal move, and they are one of the better banks of looking internal first. Your focus should be on perfecting your craft in the Group you're in first, and than internal networking next. I would be surprised if you were able to pull this off within your first you in the MM Lending group. I am not sure if they are still sending any of the CIB Analysts to CFT training's anymore, but those are always great times to network with different groups across the Bank. I was able to pull off my move due to connections I made at CFT. I wouldn't say this is an easy move necessarily, but its very doable. for now I would really focus on being the best you can in the situation you're in and start networking throughout the Bank to be able to put yourself in a good position when things open up down the road.

 

How many interview rounds did you have when moving over? Curious because I've had 5 rounds, the last with the md, and have not heard back. It's been a month.... Not sure if it's dead or not, I emailed one of the other interviewers, and no response.

You'd think they would have the decency to call and say no for an internal candidate after 5 rounds. The whole process started in November and my last interview with the md was in Jan.

 

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