Suddenly, Wells Fargo Appears to Be Winning the Recruiting Wars -- Barrons.com

By Kenneth Corbin

It wasn't that many years ago that Wells Fargo, quarter after quarter, experienced steady declines in its ranks of financial advisors. Some advisors retired, jumped to other brokerage firms, or started independent practices.

In more recent years, the trend has changed significantly. Since at least 2023, Wells Fargo has been seeing annual increases in its advisor ranks across channels, and the company says that 2026 could be its strongest recruiting year ever.

Wells Fargo won't say how many advisors currently operate on its platform, a practice in line with most large Wall Street brokerage firms, but it did confirm that in 2025, it brought on 2.7 times more advisors than it did in 2020, while attrition -- the number of advisors who left the firm -- fell 40% over the same period to a record low.

"We've been constantly investing in our platform and investing in our capabilities the last number of years really to be attractive to any type of advisor, but particularly to the best in the industry," Sol Gindi, head of Wells Fargo Advisors, tells Barron's Advisor.

According to data from research firm AdvizorPro, which tracks advisor movement through registration records, Wells Fargo had brought on 646 advisors this year from outside firms through July 17, while 524 have left, for a net gain of 122. Wells Fargo declined to comment on those figures, but a person familiar with the situation within the company suggested AdvizorPro's numbers are high, particularly the departures. AdvizorPro attempts to identify which registrants are actually producers, rather than individuals in client support roles who might be registered as brokers, but acknowledges that the publicly available data are imperfect.

Whatever the precise numbers are, the net addition of advisors is a contrast to the not-too-distant past. In the third quarter of 2022, shortly before Wells Fargo stopped sharing its head count, it reported a net loss of 173 advisors. Other national brokerage firms are a mixed bag in terms of net losses or additions of advisors, but Wells Fargo has the strongest gains in advisors added so far this year, according to AdvizorPro's numbers.

Already this year, Wells Fargo has announced the addition of 11 advisory teams that each oversaw at least $1 billion at their former firms. These include the $3.1 billion Weikes Slattery practice, which ranked as one of Barron's top private wealth teams in 2025, the $1.5 billion Bartoli Private Wealth Management Group, and a $6 billion Morgan Stanley team that includes James Taylor, whom Barron's ranked as a top advisor in New York in 2026.

What changed. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, Wells Fargo was operating amid a rolling wave of scandals including ones involving creating fake accounts on behalf of unknowing clients, illegally repossessing hundreds of veterans' vehicles, and allegedly conducting fake interviews of women and black job applicants to meet diversity targets.

News of the fake-account scandal went nationwide in September 2016. At the end of that month, Wells Fargo had 15,086 financial advisors. Four years later, that number had declined by more than 14% to 12,908 amid the various scandals.

In the time since, Wells Fargo has overhauled its executive ranks, largely avoided negative headlines, and leaned into a distinctive approach to its wealth management business that has been resonating with financial advisors considering switching firms.

That model means having something to offer advisors of all stripes. The firm is unique among the large national brokerage firms known as wirehouses for maintaining an independent channel. This allows advisors to own their own businesses (and make more decisions about how they operate) versus working as employees at large banks. Smaller competitors such as Raymond James and Ameriprise Financial offer independent affiliation models, but some industry insiders argue that Wells Fargo is leading the way.

"I believe they have the most avant-garde offering on the Street," says Bill Willis, an advisor recruiter who works with Wells Fargo as well as its competitors. "They're kind of going where the puck's going -- there's a terrific stream of independents, and they're able to accommodate them."

Wells Fargo has also shown a willingness to spend generously to bring on top talent. Michael King, a recruiter who works with Wells Fargo and its competitors, says that the firm isn't exactly an outlier in the compensation packages it offers but is highly competitive with the money it offers advisors up front, which is paired with the prospect of moving to the independent channel over time and taking ownership of the client relationships. "The Wells deal is a very attractive offer," King says. "The financials make it attractive."

The centerpiece of Wells Fargo's independent channel is FiNet, whose advisors own their own businesses and maintain dual registrations as brokers and advisors. Wells Fargo is nearing the rollout of a registered investment advisor channel, however, which will operate similarly to FiNet, but with some key differences. Advisors who affiliate with the RIA will be responsible for their own supervision such as communications monitoring and auditing, a service Wells Fargo provides to its FiNet advisors. FiNet advisors are affiliated with Wells Fargo's broker-dealer, but advisors in the RIA channel will give up their brokerage registrations and operate as full Securities and Exchange Commission-registered fiduciaries.

The coming RIA launch is indicative of the big bet Wells Fargo is placing on its channel for independent advisors. "A few years ago we weren't really investing in it," Gindi says. "Now it's an integral part of the entire business."

Wells Fargo plans to transition a couple of FiNet teams to the RIA channel by the end of the year and is aiming to open it to advisors from outside firms around the end of next year, says Erik Karanik, head of independent solutions for Wealth & Investment Management at Wells. "We'll learn with them and then we'll grow and scale it."

No-silo approach. The word Wells Fargo uses for its advisor recruitment strategy is "optionality." With its traditional brokerage unit, the growing independent channel, and the bank-based advisory business, which it has also been aggressively expanding, the firm tells advisors that they can change their affiliation model as their business and career evolve without the significant disruption that comes with changing firms.

"Most advisors only want to ever have to do that once, if they do that once -- it sort of sucks the life out of you," Gindi says. "No advisor could outgrow this firm, no client is too big for any of our capabilities on the investing or lending side."

Wells Fargo has only recently been promoting a no-silo approach that allows advisors to move from one channel to another, so time will tell how many take advantage of that flexibility. But the message hits home with advisors, particularly younger ones who aren't firmly committed to one channel over another.

"I do think people going there like to hear that it's a possibility," says King. "Whether they're going to do it or not remains to be seen."

As for the dark years of scandal, Wells Fargo executives say that those issues rarely come up in their discussions with potential advisor recruits. Gindi attributes that to a few years without significant bad press, a new leadership team, and an energized wealth management business.

"They're winning now," Willis, the recruiter, says. "It's somewhat remarkable considering where they were, shall we say, four or five years ago when so much scandal was associated with the name. The new leadership of the company has really turned things around."

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July 28, 2026 15:43 ET (19:43 GMT)