Wells Fargo Augments Online Banking PortalWells Fargo Augments Online Banking Portal

Wells Fargo & Co. is developing an internal version of its Commercial Electronic Office, an Internet portal that lets the bank's midsize commercial customers access services online. The portal will provide Wells Fargo relationship managers with a view of all their customer portfolios, something they previously had to piece together through constant interactions with sales and services teams.

Now in its initial rollout, the portal also enables Wells Fargo to pinpoint more precisely and better serve the needs of customers in specific industries, including cash handling for the gaming industry, commercial-purchasing cards for the oil and gas industry, and trade-finance services for importers and exporters.

Commercial Electronic Office has grown from 2,000 customers in 2000 to 18,000, or 60% of Wells Fargo's commercial customers, handling $6 trillion in payments in 2003, says Steve Ellis, executive VP of wholesale banking services. The software architecture has changed, too: What began as a fat-client model now uses Web services.

Wells Fargo, with $400 billion in assets, created the portal to serve the needs of middle-market companies, which, despite forming the backbone of most banks' customer bases, are often the last to be outfitted with Internet-banking services.