BNP Subsidiary Bank of the West has appointed Scott Anderson as its chief economist, responsible for providing forecasts across the bank’s business lines and clients.

Bank of the West, which has been ramping up its wealth management business of late, brought in Anderson from Wells Fargo, where he was a director and senior economist. There, he contributed to macroeconomic forecasts and various outlooks and reports the bank publishes. He has experience analyzing the economies of the US and the major European and Asian countries.

Before Bank of the West, Anderson worked at Moody’s Analytics and the International Monetary Fund.

In related news, the bank last week made changes to its management team, appointing president and chief operating officer Maura Markus as manager of its regional banking and wealth management business. Markus joined the bank in 2010 from Citibank, where she was head of international retail banking in the global consumer group. In addition to her new role, she will manage marketing and the “increasingly important area of multi-channel banking,” the firm said.

Last year, it announced initiatives to create a new private client services model targeting affluent and high net worth clients, including the creation of multiple private client advisor roles and the launch of five specialist “client centers” – four of which have now been opened. The key markets for the initiative include the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles areas, CA, Orange County, CA, Denver, CO, Albuquerque, NM, Omaha, NE and Fargo, ND.