A rebuilt banking platform and focus on digital experience led to 500,000 new mobile customers in the first quarter for Wells Fargo, the bank announced Thursday.

The $1.95 trillion bank announced plans to roll out a revamped digital banking platform last quarter, and feedback has been “very positive,” Charles Scharf, chief executive at the San Francisco-based bank, said Thursday during the bank’s first-quarter earnings presentation.

“Digital adoption, which is critical, is about delivering seamless digital experiences that our customers expect,” Scharf said during the call. “Reducing the cost to serve has continued to increase with mobile active customers up 4% from a year ago. We added approximately 500,000 new mobile active customers in the first quarter alone.”

Online and mobile customer levels grew to 33.7 million, a 2.4% increase year over year, and technology, telecommunications and equipment spend rose 4% YoY to $876 million. Teller transactions during Q1 were down 45% from pre-pandemic levels, reflecting an increased customer migration to digital channels, while branches and corporate staffing have risen by double-digit percentages in the same period, Scharf said.

Increased spending limits for the bank’s Zelle business led to strong results in Q1, with users growing by 21% and send volumes increasing by 33% YoY.

Plans for hybrid cloud migration

In the bank’s 2021 annual report, Wells Fargo outlined plans to create a platform-based application programming interface (API) architecture for banking activities based on private and public cloud solutions and data centers for cloud hosting. Scharf referred to this plan as a “once built, many times consumed” approach that the bank will move toward soon.

“This won’t happen all at once, but we have a clear path ahead,” he said in the report. “Over time, our presence will evolve to this model, improving customer experience and allowing us to get new products and services to market more quickly.”

nCino streamlines commercial banking

Wells Fargo also announced a partnership with banking fintech nCino earlier this month in a move to streamline origination, underwriting and financial processing for small business customers.

During the earnings call, Scharf said that the collaboration “builds on our existing relationship that we announced last year to accelerate our digital transformation within our commercial banking and corporate investment banking businesses.”

[stock_market_widget type=”inline” template=”generic” assets=”WFC” markup=”Shares of {name} ({symbol}) are trading at {price} ({change_pct}) as of {last_update}” api=”yf”].

Help shape our agenda for the Bank Automation Summit by applying to join the speaker roster here. Potential speakers will be contacted and confirmed directly by the editorial team, and only qualified submissions will receive a response.

Learn more about Bank Automation Summit Fall 2022.