Wells Fargo Appoints AWS Exec Faraz Shafiq as Head of AI Products and Solutions

Wells Fargo appointed Amazon Web Services (AWS) executive Faraz Shafiq as head of AI products and solutions, effective Feb. 9.

Shafiq will oversee the vision, roadmap and development for artificial intelligence-powered products across the bank and will report to Saul Van Beurden, head of AI and co-CEO of Consumer Banking and Lending, Wells Fargo said in a Monday (Jan. 26) press release.

“Hiring top talent is a critical factor to expand AI faster with higher impact,” Van Beurden said in the release. “Faraz’s deep expertise in generative and agentic AI and proven leadership in scaling enterprise platforms will accelerate the execution of our strategy of using AI to transform how we work and how we serve our customers, and ultimately propel the growth of the bank.”

Shafiq has more than 15 years of experience in technology leadership and product innovation at AWS, Verizon, AT&T and Google, according to the release. He is currently field chief technology officer, Gen AI and agentic AI, at AWS, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“AI is, of course, driving rapid changes across businesses of all types, and financial services is one of the most profoundly impacted sectors,” Shafiq said in the release. “There is no better time for me to join a premier brand and industry leader like Wells Fargo to drive innovation, ensure responsible AI practices, and collaborate across business lines to deliver transformative solutions for customers and teammates.”

In a Monday post on LinkedIn, Shafiq said: “Wells Fargo is hyper-focused on AI as a growth accelerator across the enterprise. I couldn’t be more excited for the opportunity to join Saul Van Beurden!”

Wells Fargo named Van Beurden to lead AI for the company in November. Van Beurden was CEO of Consumer and Small Business Banking at the time, and the bank said the naming of a co-CEO of Consumer Banking and Lending with Van Beurden would allow him to spend more time driving AI across the company.

Charlie Scharf, chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo, said at the time in a press release that the bank’s embrace of AI had led it to train more than 90,000 employees, deploy AI tools to over 180,000 desktops and begin to implement use cases more broadly.

“Success will be driven by business heads embracing these new technologies and rethinking their own operating models using generative and agentic AI solutions,” Scharf said in the release. “[Van Beurden] will partner with our business leaders to ensure they are leading their own transformation and will be accountable to me for consistent and meaningful progress across the company.”

Wells Fargo expanded its collaboration with Google Cloud in August to roll out AI agents across its business.

Scharf said in December that Wells Fargo had begun offering generative AI tools to its engineers and that these tools had made it 30% to 35% more efficient for them to write code.

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