Truist Financial continued its transformation with a series of senior leadership changes, including naming Vice Chair Beau Cummins to a new chief operating officer post and hiring a Wells Fargo executive to a top corporate banking post.
Cummins will oversee enterprise strategy, transformation, operations, and payments as well as a new governance and controls group. Since 2021, Cummins has served as vice chair with responsibility for Truist’s corporate and investment banking, commercial real estate, wealth, and national consumer finance services and payments businesses. He previously served as head of Truist’s corporate and institutional group.
Kristin Lesher, who has worked at Wells Fargo for more than two decades, will be Truist’s new chief wholesale banking officer, overseeing corporate and investment banking, commercial banking, commercial real estate, and wealth management businesses.
At Wells Fargo, she was most recently executive vice president and head of commercial banking coverage. She is joining Truist in February.
Truist also named Dontá Wilson as its chief consumer and small business banking officer. He is responsible for the consumer, premier and small business segments serving clients through mobile and online banking, service centers and more than 2,000 branches.
Wilson also oversees core deposit and loan products, consumer capital markets, national consumer finance businesses, enterprise marketing, client experience strategy, digital banking and innovation.
The three executives report to Chairman and CEO Bill Rogers. “This evolution of our management team speaks to the client-centric, performance-driven company we are building,” he said in a release.
Truist announced other management changes, including that Brian Dowhower will lead Truist Wealth. Dowhower succeeds Joe Thompson, who will become chief governance and controls officer.
The bank is forming a new Operating Council to “expand leadership opportunities, ensure inclusive feedback, and break down silos to enable the company to more effectively pursue its goals,” according to its release.
The changes come four years after the merger of Atlanta-based SunTrust and Winston-Salem-based BB&T created Truist. While the bank has remained profitable, its stock price has lagged, sparking pressure from some investors for significant changes.
Cummins is a veteran SunTrust executive, while Wilson came up through the BB&T system. Rogers, who was a longtime CEO of SunTrust, succeeded former BB&T CEO Kelly King as Truist’s top leader in an agreement worked out during merger negotiations.
