Wells Fargo on Monday announced the launch of a new commercial banking platform — a revamp the San Francisco-based bank says leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to help clients personalize their accounts.
The platform, called Vantage, replaces the bank’s Commercial Electronic Office Portal, or CEO Portal, which it launched over two decades ago to serve its commercial banking and corporate and investment banking clients. More than $1 trillion in payments volume flows through the portal each month, in addition to generating over 5 million sessions monthly, according to the bank.
Vantage is designed to meet the evolving needs of corporate and commercial clients, said Reetika Grewal, head of digital for Wells Fargo commercial banking and corporate and investment banking. The bank is in the process of migrating CEO Portal users to Vantage accounts, Grewal added.
“We set out on a vision to bring a consumer-like experience to our commercial and corporate clients,” said Grewal, who was head of digital at JPMorgan Chase before joining Wells Fargo in March 2021. “At the end of the day, the customer wants intuitive experiences that are personalized.”
The platform is modular by design, Grewal said, and aims to address firms’ financial services needs as they grow.
“As your company grows, you need more sophisticated tools, and those tools become available to you within the same experience,” she said. “It’s all in one portal. As your company grows, you won’t run out of runway because of the modular nature of how we built it. It gives us the ability to scale with customers.”
The bank spent the last year building the platform, and focused its initial efforts on identifying user personas, Grewal said.
“A company in their early stages may have a controller, or an external consultant that's doing the accounting, or maybe they hired a CFO,” she said. “At a later stage, there may be 40 to 100 people that are interacting, in some for another, in their financial transactions. It’s another piece of the puzzle — solving for a range of customers.”
Grewal said the bank built artificial intelligence and machine learning into the foundation of the platform to help manage the range of customer types expected to use Vantage.
The launch comes as legacy institutions like Wells Fargo face growing competition from fintech firms that are also launching platforms to serve businesses’ banking needs.
But Grewal said she thinks Vantage will be a differentiator for Wells Fargo.
“We want Vantage to be a place where our clients can get all of their banking from a digital perspective. We have a lot in one platform,” she said.
Grewal said the bank is also attuned to the fintech ecosystem, and is looking to partner where it makes sense.
The new platform is the latest digital revamp for the $1.7 trillion-asset bank. Wells Fargo rolled out a new consumer mobile app this year and unveiled a virtual assistant, called Fargo, in October.
