Wells Fargo recently announced that Lester Owens will be joining the company in July of 2020 as the head of operations. In his role, he will be responsible for building a more unified, more integrated approach to Wells Fargo’s business operations functions. Additionally, Owens will report to Chief Operating Officer Scott Powell and will serve on the company’s Operating Committee.
Owens will be joining Wells Fargo from Bank of New York Mellon, where he was Global Head of Operations, responsible for a team of 20,000 employees supporting every stage of the client investment lifecycle, including account creation, trading, clearing and settlement, and asset servicing.
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Prior to joining BNY Mellon, he spent 10 years at JPMorgan Chase, where he was responsible for Global Wholesale Banking Operations, among other roles. Lester previously led significant operations functions for Deutsche Bank, Citibank, and Bankers Trust. Owens is a graduate of Long Island University and the Fairleigh Dickinson Executive MBA program.
In a statement released
by Wells Fargo, Chief Operating Officer Scott Powell said, “Lester is a highly regarded operations executive with more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry and a passion for excellence, customer experience, efficiency, and transformation.”He went on to add, “While everyone at Wells Fargo shares the responsibility for operational excellence, Lester’s team will enable us to deliver the best experience possible for our customers while driving consistent execution across our business operations functions, including contact center operations, client servicing support, money movements within our businesses, lending operations, and other functions. We will all benefit from having Lester’s deep experience and talent in this critical role,” said Powell.