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Wells Fargo Head of Global Treasury Management Payments and Transaction Services john hunter Focused on simplifying bank experiences with Cloud, AI and Machine Learning.
The San Francisco-based bank invested $9.4 billion in technology in Q1, launched the Wells Fargo Vantage digital banking platform, and continues to look to AI for opportunities within the bank.
Hunter discussed $1.8 trillion Wells Fargo’s recent efforts on its payments strategy, digital banking platform solutions, and the use of AI and ML within its platform. Here’s what’s in the edited version of the conversation:
Bank Automation News: What technology is Wells Fargo working on in the area of treasury management?
John Hunter: We are thinking very hard about creating innovative solutions that simplify complex banking experiences, while leaning into emerging technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning to modernize our payments platforms. We aim to help customers make payments simple, fast and easy. One of my priorities has always been to help customers transform at their own pace – it’s great that we can provide a banking platform with similar goals.
It’s also been exciting to see our customers begin using Wells Fargo’s Vantage platform, a digital banking platform for our wholesale customers that aggregates all of their banking needs – beyond treasury – into one solution. The system’s AI will be able to provide recommendations tailored to each customer’s specific needs, while ML continually learns how to deliver personalized experiences that help customers grow their businesses.
Sanctions: How have you worked to bring Wells Fargo’s Treasury Management and Global Payment Solutions product teams together? What happened to this?
JH: It starts at the top with the head of global treasury management for Wells Fargo, Paul Camp. Paul brought me on to lead payments products shortly after starting at Wells Fargo, in the fall of 2021. Providing payment and liquidity services to financial institutions.
What we’ve done with the GPS business is similar to what we’ve applied to areas like commercial real estate, health care and technology. This starts with using traditional product management disciplines that maximize returns and efficiency. And, in particular, you need people who have a deep understanding of the business segments they support and can work with partners across the firm to develop the payment solutions our clients need to grow their businesses. Need to do and change.
Sanctions: What innovations are you most excited about in the treasury management space, or the payments space?
JH: Technology moves very quickly, and even from inside the world of payments, we can’t always predict which direction things are headed. For example, look at how quickly AI has become part of the conversation across industries. We need to be able to support our customers by providing holistic solutions that will not only support them where they are today, but where they want to grow next.
I mentioned how we are using AI and ML in our digital banking platform to create a personalized banking experience. We also think that automation will go a long way in addressing the challenges we face in the payments business. The system faces a lot of friction from different types of payments and different channels, which leads to manual work to reconcile the payments. ML and AI can be used to help solve those issues and drive significant operational cost savings for our customers.
Looking ahead to the future, I am excited about Open Banking and Event Invisible Banking. I see a future where banking will be behind the scenes, embedded in everyday activities. Even phones as a payment medium may become obsolete as emerging technology enables seamless, automated payments – what you might call an invisible experience.
Sanctions: What are your plans for the Treasury Management Payments Products team for the rest of 2023?
JH: We have a lot going on! We are among some promising POCs. One is the services around us. These are payments where we are the bank on both sides of the transaction. POC is helping us learn how to better leverage our scale around settlements 24/7. We are also working on a Distributed Ledger (DLT) pilot to explore how to simplify settlements and reduce risk.
ISO 20022 [an open global standard for sending digital payment messages and data between financial institutions] That’s also a focus for the rest of the year. We are always trying to unlock value for the customers. And I think the real differentiator can be the way we use the data. There is a huge opportunity to unlock the potential of the rich data that will be exchanged with the industry transformation to ISO 20022. It can be a foundational data layer that drives new products and delivers new customer insights.
Lastly, we are working on a new payment engine for our core products that will enable us to provide customers with distinctive, value-added services across a wide range of market segments. This is exciting work that we expect will bring huge benefits to our customers going forward.
BAN: What’s the best leadership advice you’ve ever received?
JH: I was once told as a leader, you should always give credit to your team for successes but blame yourself for mistakes. It’s important to celebrate victory and give recognition to the team that helped you get there, as well as providing cover and understanding that “the buck stops here” when things go wrong.
I always try to remember this as a leader. No one can do it alone, but ultimately, it is my responsibility to make sure things go well. I think it builds trust with your team and helps them feel supported to do their best.
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