Wells Fargo private wealth head taps firm's full capabilities for clients

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Key insight: As wealth managers vie for market share serving wealthy clients, Wells Fargo Private Wealth Head Krista Goryl seeks to ensure advisors have the firm’s vast banking and other resources at their disposal.
Supporting data: High net worth households with between $5 million and $200 million now hold 40% of all assets in U.S. wealth management, according to Cerulli Associates. That’s up from 18% in 2013.
Expert quote: “We’ve also seen a trend on the credit side because we have had our clients use our custom platform to have liquidity solutions through Wells and go out and make investments on their own, whether it be in real estate or a sports team.” — Krista Goryl, Wells Fargo head of private wealth

Krista Goryl has spent more than a decade and a half at Wells Fargo preparing for the role that opened up to her when longtime private bank head, Julie Caperton, retired earlier this year.

She can trace her rise to her current position as private wealth director for Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management to 2010, when she joined the firm in San Diego. Later, she became business growth strategy director for the wealth unit’s western division.

Her new role puts her in charge of Wells Fargo advisors serving some of the most-coveted clients in the wealth management industry: high net worth and ultrahigh net worth investors, business owners and family offices.

“I’m meeting with private wealth teams and private wealth clients, and I do cover the country for that and work with those advisors and then with the clients because we’re always trying to make sure that we’re offering everything that we can to clients and anticipate their needs by bringing solutions to them,” Goryl said.

For many firms, wealthy clients’ appeal comes not only from their ample assets but also their fast-growing numbers. The research firm Cerulli Associates reported in March that high net worth households, defined as those with between $5 million and $200 million, now have 40% of all assets that are up for grabs by U.S. wealth managers. That’s up from 18% in 2013.

Goryl recently sat down with Financial Planning to discuss what Wells Fargo is doing to make sure it’s well-positioned to help — and retain — such clients.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Financial Planning: How do you define high net worth or ultrahigh net worth?

Krista Goryl: For us, a private wealth client has $10 million or more. Obviously, many are significantly above that with Wells Fargo.

FP: What particular services does Wells offer these clients?

KG: It’s so important that we’re surrounding our advisor teams with expertise for those clients. So that would include our estate and tax planning group, trust, philanthropic services, our specialty assets like real estate, our family-dynamics team.

It’s definitely a growth area for us because we’re finding that these clients are coming to Wells Fargo not just because of their relationship with their advisor but also to leverage the platform here for private wealth.

We’re an institution with a large balance sheet. We can help our clients with banking, with credit facilities. We also have a partnership with our commercial and investment banks. So we have all that expertise and resources to make sure that we’re bringing together a team that’s collaborative for those clients.

FP: What are some of the biggest topics of discussion among wealthy clients these days?

KG: There’s first of all this multigenerational wealth transfer that’s happening. So we’re preparing clients for that by leveraging our family-dynamics team, making sure to educate the next generation, working with business owners who are having liquidity events and helping them structure the right solutions to protect what they’ve built.

We’ve also seen a trend on the credit side because we have had our clients use our custom platform to have liquidity solutions through Wells and go out and make investments on their own, whether it be in real estate or a sports team.

FP: What are some of your newest service and product offerings?

KG: We want to make sure we’re helping our clients with everything on the investment side and the other side of the balance sheet, but certainly with specialty assets. So for example, we have a real estate asset management team that will help our clients take a look at their real estate portfolios.

And then again, because we’re seeing a lot of transition in the business space, we’re using our business-owner advisory team to come in and consult with the business owner on succession, on building valuation, leveraging our investment bank at the point of sale, and then pulling it through and helping with the family after that liquidity event.

FP: What are your goals for private wealth right now, or the private bank?

KG: We are trying to make it simpler for clients as their needs are becoming more complex. We want to make sure our clients have the confidence that they have the right plan and make it easier for them by having that dedicated advisor team to really help them with whatever they need, so they can focus on what matters most to them. That’s the goal, so that they can be focused on their families, their businesses and really their legacies.

FP: Wells Fargo obviously has a presence throughout the U.S. But are your private wealth services concentrated in certain wealth hubs?

KG: We have specialists across the whole country because we know that we have advisors that may have clients in a different part of the country. What we’re finding is not only do we have quite a few private wealth clients in all the major metropolitan areas but also that there’s wealth creation through liquidity events, especially this year, in different parts of the country.

Making sure that all those clients have access to those same specialists is a differentiator for us because we don’t necessarily keep all those specialists, for example, here in New York. They’re located across the country, and there’s always a specialist, whether it be for someone for estate and tax planning, or someone from business-owner advisory, or real estate asset management or family dynamics that can come in. But they’re not all located in one spot.

FP: What happens when clients are working with a regular advisor through Wells Fargo Advisors, and then maybe have a windfall or inherit money? Are they automatically bumped up to the private wealth level?

KG: If clients came into that level of wealth, they would have access to the same tools that other clients would have in that space, based on their asset level and their need, not based on where their advisor sits.

There is not a forced partnership model or referral model that has to happen when a client hits a certain AUM, because we want to make sure to protect that client experience. Now, the advisor may choose to bring a different advisor into the relationship. But that is not something that we mandate once clients get to a certain level.

FP: What other benefits do clients get from working with a firm with a wide breadth of offerings?

KG: These clients appreciate working with one organization and having that dedicated advisor team. Because being able to pull in someone from banking or custom credit or from the investment bank or commercial bank and having it all be in one location really helps with the integration of the plan that the advisor is putting together. It’s helping us go deeper with our existing relationships and also attract new ultrahigh net worth clients and the next generation of clients.