Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle included a great interview with Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich.
Q: How good is Wells at measuring how much money you’re earning from each customer relationship? What portion of your customers is profitable?.
A: About 63 percent are profitable, and the others we call potential.
The average consumer has 15 financial relationships. If you can get only four of those, you are profitable. If you get 8 or 9 or 10, you are really profitable. And you can give them lower prices like Wal-Mart because you can spread your costs. In that sense, we have more in common with the Wal-Marts and Home Depots of the world than we do with other banks.