NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co expects an upside in net interest income going ahead, Chief Financial Officer Mike Santomassimo said on Tuesday.
The bank had earlier issued guidance for a 10% higher net interest income this year, more than the full-year 2022 level of $45 billion.
Santomassimo, who was speaking at a conference, said he was confident of an upside.
The lender expects losses in office loans, which have seen some pressure as property values have declined and more borrowers are defaulting on their loans. Santomassimo said that while the overall consumer remains healthy, ones with FICO score of less than 660 were feeling more stressed.
“We had booked up about $650 million allowance increase (in credit allowance) last quarter; it could be a little higher than that, could be closer to a billion depending on where it all shakes out,” Santomassimo said.
In the January-March quarter, the bank had reported a $643 million increase in the allowance for credit losses, including for loans on commercial real estate, credit cards and cars.
The San Francisco-based bank also warned that, as attrition has slowed down, there could be some onetime expenses by the end of the year in terms of severance.
The fourth-largest U.S. bank has been prohibited by regulators from increasing its assets after a series of scandals over how it treated customers.
Regulators have also ordered it to improve governance and oversight, which has curtailed balance sheet growth and increased regulatory expenses.
(Reporting by Nupur Anand and Saeed Azhar in New York; editing by Jason Neely and Jonathan Oatis)
