Wells Fargo Financial Anlysis

In March 1852 Henry Wells and William Fargo founded Wells, Fargo & Co. to serve the West. The new company offered banking (buying gold, and selling paper bank drafts as good as gold) - and express (rapid delivery of the gold and anything else valuable). Wells Fargo opened for business in the gold rush port of San Francisco, and soon Wells Fargo's agents opened offices in the other new cities and mining camps of the West. In the boom and bust economy of the 1850s, Wells Fargo earned a reputation of trust by dealing rapidly and responsibly with people's money. In the 1860s, it earned everlasting fame - and its corporate symbol - with the grand adventure of the overland stagecoach line. In 1888, Wells Fargo became the country's first nationwide express company. It adopted the motto "Ocean-to-Ocean" to describe its service that connected over 2,500 communities in 25 states, and "Over-the-Seas" to highlight its lines linking America's increasingly global economy.

Today, Wells Fargo & Company is a diversified financial services company with $428 billion in assets, providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance to more than 23 million customers from more than 6,000 stores and the internet (wellsfargo.com) across North America and elsewhere internationally. Wells Fargo's vision statement reads "We want to satisfy all of our customers' financial needs, help them succeed financially, be the premier provider of financial services in every one of our markets, and be known as one of America's great companies."

Goals

We must offer better products and a broader product line than our local competitors,

Grow annual earnings per share at a double-digit compound rate,

Be among the very best in ROE with a 20 percent or higher return.

Lose fewer team members and lose fewer customers every year than any other competitor in our industry.

Grow revenue twice as fast as expenses.

Sell at least eight products to every customer.

Ten Strategies

1. Investments, Brokerage, Trust and Insurance This

is a prime example of "going where the money is."

At year-end 2003, 14 percent of our banking

earnings came from investments, brokerage, trust

and insurance--over double where we were a few

years ago--but it's still not good enough. We must

increase that to at least 25 percent. Less than five

percent of our 11 million banking households have

relationships with our brokerage business. Less

than two percent buy insurance through us.

2. "Going for Gr-Eight" Double the number of

products our consumer and business customers

have with us to eight products per customer.

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3. Doing it Right for the Customer Our product is

service and advice. We want to be advocates for our

customers, put them at the center of everything we

do and give them such outstanding service and

advice that they will give us all their business, honor

us with repeat purchases and rave about us to their

family, friends and business associates.

4. Banking with a Mortgage and a Home Equity Loan

We want all our mortgage customers in our 23

banking states to bank with us. We also want all our

banking customers--who need a mortgage or a

home equity loan--to get it through Wells Fargo.

Eighty one percent of our banking households that

have a mortgage have it with one of our competitors.

Only about 18 percent of our mortgage customers

have a home equity loan with us.

5. Wells Fargo Cards in Every Wells Fargo Wallet

Every one of our creditworthy customers should

have a Wells Fargo credit card and debit card.

Only twenty-seven percent of our banking customers

have a credit card with Wells Fargo. Eighty-six

percent have a Wells Fargo debit card.

6. When, Where and How As a national leader in

distributing financial services, we offer customers

more choices than any other company--traditional

stores, supermarket stores, ATMs, Phone Banks,

internet and mail--when, where and how they want

to use them. Very few, if any, customers are singlechannel

users. We integrate these channels so we

can offer all our products and services through all of

them--any time, anywhere our customers want to

be served.

7. "Information-Based" Marketing We must take full

advantage of what we know about our customers'

needs so we can offer them the choice, convenience

and price benefits of giving us all their business. We

use technology not to de-personalize service but to

personalize it. Thanks to technology, we know how

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many products each customer has with us. We know

which