Wells Fargo Advisors ended 2022 with stable advisor head count

Advisors at Wells Fargo have been under a cloud since 2016, when the bank's fake-account scandal erupted.

After struggling for years to stabilize the ranks of its financial advisors in the wake of its banking scandals, Wells Fargo Advisors Friday reported a financial advisor head count of 12,027 for the fourth quarter, an increase of 16 advisors compared to the total at the end of September.

That gain doesn’t mean it was a boffo year for recruiting and retaining financial advisors at Wells Fargo Advisors; its year-over-year-tally of advisors declined by 340 from 2021, or 2.7%.

Still, to end the year with a net positive head count of financial advisors must have thrilled some at the firm. “We continue to have strong momentum attracting the best and most talented advisors in the business and attrition continues to drop,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.

The stability occurred during a year when Wells Fargo Advisors rejiggered its management team at the top; Jim Hays stepped down in May as head of Wells Fargo Advisors.

Hays was replaced by Sol Gindi, who will also head the Wealth & Investment Management client relationship group.

Barry Sommers took over as CEO of Wealth & Investment Management in June 2020.

Advisors at Wells Fargo have been under a cloud since 2016, when Wells Fargo & Co., the parent of Wells Fargo Advisors, reported that bank employees had secretly created millions of unauthorized accounts in the names of customers without their consent. The bank was fined $185 million and then-CEO John Stumpf resigned. Myriad bank-related scandals followed. At its peak, Wells Fargo had more than 15,000 wealth management financial advisors, many of whom have fled to competitors, and it has since cut or consolidated various business lines of financial advisors.

2022 was a push-and-pull year for recruiting at Wells Fargo Advisors. For example, in November, advisors with nearly $2.6 billion in client assets left UBS Financial Services Inc. to form a new practice, Margate Wealth Management Group, that’s affiliated with Wells. Days later, LPL Financial announced that a team with $630 million in client assets, Artiea Capital Management, had left Wells Fargo’s independent contractor group, Financial Advisors Network or FiNet, to register with LPL.

The Wealth & Investment Management group reported $3.7 billion in total annual revenue and $715 million in net income for 2022, representing year-over-year increases, respectively, of 1% and 27%.

[More: Wells Fargo Advisors keeps focus on simpler pay plan for advisers in 2023]