Wells Fargo Again Named Best Consumer Internet Bank in U.S. by Global Finance

Published on Wednesday, 28 July 2010 13:14 Written by TradersHuddle Staff

SAN FRANCISCO-( Business Wire )-

For the second consecutive year, Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) has taken several top spots in the first North American round of Global Finance magazine’s World’s Best Internet Banks competition. Wells Fargo was named the Best Consumer Internet Bank and Best Corporate/Institutional Internet Bank in the U.S. In the Consumer category, Wells Fargo again was the U.S. winner in Bill Payment and Presentment, Best Web Site Design, and Best Online Deposits Acquisition, and added Best Integrated Consumer Bank Site. On the Corporate/Institutional side, Wells Fargo earned Best Website Design and Best Information Security Initiatives.

“In 2010 we celebrated our 15^th anniversary of serving our customers online, and we’re very proud to continue breaking new ground with services like mobile and text banking,” said Jim Smith, executive vice president at Wells Fargo Internet Services Group. “As a pioneer of online banking we take pride in ensuring that everything our customers find at wellsfargo.com is easy to use and well designed – and that they can find everything they need to succeed financially.”

This is the 11^th year Global Finance has named the World’s Best Internet Banks. Winning banks were selected based on strength of strategy for attracting and servicing online customers, success in getting clients to use web offerings, growth of online customers, breadth of product offerings, evidence of tangible benefits gained from Internet initiatives, and website design and functionality.

Also this year, Wells Fargo marked the 10^th anniversary of its Commercial Electronic Office^® (CEO^®) portal – the first comprehensive internet portal for commercial banking customers when it launched in 2000. Today, 50,000 companies access the portal’s 60-plus products and services. More than 70 percent of Wells Fargo’s commercial and corporate customers are now enrolled in the portal, averaging two million logins per month.

Wells Fargo Internet Banking currently has 17.4 million active online customers. Wells Fargo’s top ranking was based in part on the many tools it offers customers, including:

• My Spending Report with Budget Watch: A patented, free online money management tool that categorizes transactions and enables customers to track their spending by category, so they can find ways to spend less. It helps customers create a budget in as few as two clicks and monitor their progress throughout the month – delivering the information customers need to stay on budget and gain more control of their finances.
• My Savings Plan^SM: A free online tool that provides Wells Fargo savings account customers an easy way to save toward a goal and automatically monitor progress.
• Smarter Credit^TM center: An online resource that provides information and services to help customers be smarter about credit – whether it’s establishing credit for the first time, reducing debt, getting more credit, or managing and protecting credit for the long term.
• Online Bill Pay: This popular service allows customers to schedule payments to merchants, lenders and other billers, ensuring they’ll always pay on time.
• Wells Fargo Mobile^SM Banking: Secure mobile account access that enables consumer and small business customers to connect to their Wells Fargo accounts through three easy ways including text messaging (93557), mobile website (wf.com), and downloadable apps for four of today's most popular smartphones. Customers may access wf.com through our Android™, BlackBerry^®, iPhone and iPod touch, or Palm mobile banking applications ("apps") to quickly log in to check their accounts, pay a bill, transfer funds between accounts or to another customer, or to find the nearest Wells Fargo ATMs.

About Wells Fargo Online & Mobile Banking

Wells Fargo is a leading provider of online and mobile financial services for individual consumers, small and middle market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, money movement, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products. Wells Fargo launched its personal computer banking service in 1989 and was the first bank to offer Internet banking services through wellsfargo.com in May 1995. Since January 2009, Wells Fargo has been named the No. 1 Consumer Internet Bank in the United States by Global Finance Magazine, ranked the No. 1 website out of 68 leading U.S. corporations' websites for technology innovation by the Brookings Institution and was awarded two Monarch Innovation Awards by Barlow Research for online services for small business, including Foreign Exchange Online and My Spending Report with Budget Watch.

Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a nationwide, diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.2 trillion in assets. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, insurance, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance through more than 10,000 banking stores, 12,000 ATMs, the Internet (wellsfargo.com and wachovia.com), and other distribution channels across North America and internationally. With more than 278,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in America. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked #19 on Fortune’s 2009 rankings of America’s largest corporations. Wells Fargo’s vision is to satisfy all our customers’ financial needs and help them succeed financially.

Wells Fargo & CompanyJim Rowe, 415-396-8216 (Investors)Beverly Butler, 415-222-1776 (Media)