Wells Fargo names COO Scott Powell as its next chief risk officer
A key figure in the bank’s comeback
Powell, 62, has been COO at Wells Fargo since December 2019, arriving as one of Scharf’s first major hires after the new CEO was brought in to resolve a sweeping regulatory crisis stemming from the bank’s 2016 fake-accounts scandal.
Before joining Wells Fargo, Powell served as CEO of Santander Holdings USA, where he led that firm’s financial and regulatory turnaround. He also held senior roles at JPMorgan Chase, including head of Consumer Banking and Lending Operations.
At Wells Fargo, Powell led the bank’s multi-year operational transformation, overseeing global operations, control management, regulatory relations, customer complaints and remediations. His portfolio also included corporate security, strategic sourcing, and corporate properties.
His elevation to CRO comes at a pivotal moment. In June 2025, the Federal Reserve removed the asset growth limitation it had imposed on Wells Fargo in a 2018 consent order – a restriction that had capped the bank’s balance sheet at approximately $1.95 trillion for seven years. Since 2019, Wells Fargo resolved 14 consent orders imposed by regulators, with risk remediation at the center of each resolution.
Flowers leaves a lasting institutional mark
Flowers joined Wells Fargo in 1995 and rose through a series of credit and risk roles, including chief credit officer and chief market risk officer, before being named CRO in 2022, a role he stepped into when his predecessor, Amanda Norton, retired. His tenure as CRO overlapped with the bank’s most intensive period of regulatory remediation.
