About Michael Santomassimo
Michael Santomassimo, Wells Fargo's CFO, has described the bank's underlying performance in 2025 as "quite good" in a January 2026 interview, citing growth in credit card accounts, commercial loans, auto loans, and investment banking fees following the removal of the asset cap. He stated that the company is focused on "constant execution over a long period of time" to grow its franchises. In earlier appearances throughout 2024 and 2025, Santomassimo noted that the bank was "near the trough" on net interest income and that the consumer and commercial customers were entering an uncertain economic environment in "really good shape." He attributed a reduction in net interest income guidance in mid-2025 to higher activity in the markets business, which was offset by fee income, and said the change was "not a big change relative to how much revenue we expect to earn."
Santomassimo has also discussed the bank's progress on regulatory issues, stating in 2024 that finishing that work was the "top priority" and that a consent order related to sales practices had been terminated. He has emphasized that the bank is not "chasing growth by taking more risk" and that loan growth has been weaker than expected, with the company maintaining consistent underwriting standards. Regarding commercial real estate, he said in 2023 that the story would "play out over an extended time period" and that the bank had increased its allowance for credit losses in that business.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Michael Santomassimo's recent appearances.
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Transcript (7 segments)
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Narrator0:00
Car insurance, go to Finance Buzz. Now.
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Host0:05
Welcome back to Money Movers. Take a look at shares of Wells Fargo down more than 5% despite reporting a beat on the top and bottom lines and notching their first revenue beat in a year. The company did cut its full year net interest income guidance. Joining us here straight off the earnings call and first on CNBC, Wells Fargo CFO Michael Santomassimo. Mike, it's great to have you back on it. Is that NII miss and lowered guidance which caught the street off guard? Can you just explain why that happened?
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Michael Santomassimo0:35
Sure. Thanks, Sara. Thanks for having me again. You know, look, firstly, if you look at the quarter again, as you pointed out, it was a good quarter in the sense of showing more progress on a lot of the investments we're making. You saw revenue growth in the quarter. You saw good expense control. We bought back some stock, returned more capital to shareholders. We announced an increase in the dividend. You saw good credit performance. And so by and large, a pretty solid performance. When you look at what's happening with net interest income for the year, really the bulk of what we talked about is being offset in fees in the trading business. And so we brought net interest income down a little bit from what we talked about in April and largely offset in fees. And that's because we're seeing more activity in places like commodities and rates in some of our markets businesses than what we had assumed. So net net, not a big change relative to how much revenue we expect to earn. But the geography of it moves around a little bit because we're seeing good activity levels in the markets business.
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Host1:38
But is it also, I mean, does it say something about where the path of rates is headed and relative to where your expectations are?
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Michael Santomassimo1:48
Not really. You know, when you look at what's happening with rates and the change in rates year to date and the change in expectations that we've seen, that really hasn't impacted net interest income much at all. Lots of different ups and downs across the balance sheet, but net net, not a big impact. It really is this change in some of the markets business that we talked about, because the underlying trends that are driving net interest income are pretty stable. We're starting to see a little bit of loan growth, maybe not as much as everyone hopes, but we're starting to see it. Deposit trends have been pretty stable. Deposit costs came down in the quarter again versus the first quarter. So overall, the core trends are pretty stable. And what we're seeing is some higher activity that drives funding costs on the market side, but also you get paid in fees.
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Host2:38
I was going to ask you about loan growth. What the assumption there is, whether you're going to continue to see it resume rebound and what's driving it.
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Michael Santomassimo2:49
Yeah. In the consumer side of the portfolio, we're still seeing mortgages come down just a little bit quarter on quarter. We do expect to see some growth in the credit card business as we go into the second half of the year. Some of that's just seasonal patterns that happen every year. We did see a little bit of growth in our auto portfolio as well in the quarter, so hopefully that will continue as we look in the next couple of quarters. And then on the commercial side is where we saw the more meaningful growth in the quarter. And as we look into the year, we do expect to continue to see some modest growth. It was pretty widespread across our corporate investment banking clients this quarter, which is good. It wasn't over concentrated in one area. And so hopefully we'll start to see that, particularly as people get more and more comfortable with the go forward economic picture.
