US Banker - October 2009

CARA HEIDEN CO-PRESIDENT

WELLS FARGO HOME MORTGAGE, WELLS FARGO & CO.

Rallying the troops comes easy for Cara Heiden, the co-president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. Whether she’s hosting a mid-year conference call with 5,000 employees or broadcasting live to 11,000 real estate agents, Heiden thrives on trying to engage thousands of employees in a common pursuit.

“I want to allow everybody the opportunity to put their mark on a decision or outcome,” says Heiden, who oversees mortgage production, servicing, consumer marketing and cross-selling at the Des Moines mortgage unit of Wells Fargo & Co. “If people feel they are part of a decision and have been heard, then that yields commitment.”

To build market share while many competitors were struggling, Heiden developed Wells’ PriorityBuyer and Closing Guarantee programs, in which the bank pre-qualifies borrowers while guaranteeing their closing date—or it pays the first month’s principal and interest.

Wells has increased its default servicing staff by 50 percent this year, to 11,500. It claims 750,000 refinancings and 200,000 modifications through the first six months of the year. “This is the first time in my career where the mortgage loan origination unit is as busy as the servicing group, working to keep people in their

homes,” Heiden says.

“Throughout the day, getting so many calls, hearing borrowers’ situations—it’s emotionally pretty draining.”

Heiden never intended to become a banker after graduating from Iowa State University. She says a love of math initially set her sights on becoming a high school calculus teacher, but a friend suggested she become an accountant. She joined

Norwest Bank in Iowa, which eventually merged with Wells.

Though Wells’ profit fell to $2.8 billion in 2008 from $8.1 billion in 2007, revenue rose 7 percent, to $42.2 billion. In the second quarter, revenue rose 28 percent, to a record $22.5 billion (including $3 billion from mortgage activities), while net income rose 47 percent from a year earlier, to $2.6 billion, after paying dividends.

Wells continues to work through its commercial real estate

12

Age: 53
Favorite pastime:
Spending time with my daughters
Children:
Three ( 16, 19 & 23)
Last book read:
The Shack
Last movie seen:
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood
Prince”
Charity most active in:
The United Way
One thing on “bucket” list:
European travel
Top non-business concern:
Quality of education

and consumer loan portfolios, including the option adjustable-rate mortgages it inherited in the Wachovia acquisition last year. Still, chargeoffs in the second quarter rose an unexpected 35 percent, to $4.4 billion, and nonperforming assets jumped 45 percent, to $18.3 billion.

“It’s just been a continuum of ever-changing, enhancing and expanding [loan] modifications as we as a country began to further realize the seriousness of the economic situation,” she says. "I've never seen a year like this.”

—Kate Berry

13 AVID MODJTABAI HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONS WELLS FARGO & CO.

While other bankers fretted about foreclosures and defaults this year, Avid Modjtabai spent her days (and a few nights) worrying about ATMs. Twelve thousand of them, to be exact, along with

58,000 servers, which store 21 million gigabytes of data and process 6. 3 million checks each year. That’s what it means to be the head of technology and operations at Wells Fargo & Co. as it digests behemoth Wachovia Bank and cements its position as the country’s fourth-largest financial institution.

“Clearly it’s a huge effort,” says Modjtabai, pointing out that the merger doubled Wells’ asset size, to $1.3 trillion, and that the combined institution now processes 15 billion customer transactions every year, all of which go through her department. “But when it’s very challenging is also when it’s very interesting.”

Sometimes the biggest challenges seem very mundane, and some refer to Modjtabai’s business as the “plumbing and wiring” of the bank. Take e-mail, for example. When Wells Fargo and Wachovia merged, they were operating on two different systems—IBM’s Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook—which caused countless snags when it came to sharing contacts and creating calendar entries. Bringing 280,000 employees on the same system, without causing outages that could disrupt customer service turned out to be a huge ex-

Age: 47
Favorite pastimes:
Traveling, hiking, skiing
with family
Children:
One (age 14)
Last book read:
My Stroke of Insight
Last movie seen:
“The Queen & I”
(HBO documentary)
Charity most active in:
First Graduate
One thing on “bucket” list:
Visit Ne w Zealand
Top non-business concern:
Education

pense and logistical headache. Still, Modjtabai surveyed her team, took their recommendations and is now spearheading one of the largest email convergences in financial history.

“At the end of the day we are problem solvers,” says Modjtabai, who left her native Iran in 1979 to study engineering at Stanford University. “My approach is very fact-based. When we are coming up with long-term solutions for our network infrastructure, I look at the facts on the table and never lose my focus on the customers.”

This attitude has served Modjtabai well in her career. Since joining Wells Fargo in 1993 as a corporate strategy consultant, Modjtabai has been dispatched to a wide variety of divisions at the bank, including running human resources. The universe under her oversight has also grown quickly: she now manages a $5.1 billion budget and 28,000 employees. Observers often point out that her ascent looks like a test run for a C-level spot, but John Stumpf, Wells Fargo’s CEO, wouldn’t corroborate the speculation.

“We have a very robust talent review process here,” he says. “Avid has a wonderful future here and so do a lot of people.”

Of course, Stumpf is thrilled with her performance so far. In addition to her role has head of human resources, Modjtabai also led the Internet Services Group from 2002 to 2005, helping the bank become one of the most respected providers of online financial services.