Wells Fargo second-quarter net income declined by 23 percent,but still managed to beat earnings estimates and report growth inseveral business segments including insurance that saw double-digitgrowth.

As a whole, company net income dropped by $526 million to $1.75billion compared with $2.8 billion for the period last year.Earnings per share decreased by 14 cents to 53 cents, exceedinganalyst's expectations by 3 cents a share. Revenues rose $1.6billion to $11.5 billion for the quarter.

In a recorded message, Howard Atkins, chief financial officerfor San Francisco bank Wells Fargo, repeatedly used the term“growth” to describe the company's multiple financialplatforms.

The company was hit with credit expenses of $3 billion, up fromthe $2.3 billion it recorded for the same period last year. He saidpart of the expense consisted of a $1.5 billion build-up in creditreserve.

For the six-month period, net income dropped $771 million, or 17percent, to $3.75 billion. Earnings per share were down 20 cents to$1.13. Revenues increased by $2.7 billion to $22 billion.

Despite the charges, Mr. Atkins said Wells Fargo has “continuedto grow our company's profitability at a time when many of ourpeers are losing money and shrinking.”

Wells Fargo's insurance segment, which includes its insurancebrokerage business, reported revenues increased 27 percent, or $118million, to $550 million for the quarter. For the six months,revenues are up 27 percent, or $223 million, to $1.05 billion.

Mr. Atkins said consumer and small-business insurance revenuegrew 12 percent while its mid-market commercial achieved revenuegrowth of 27 percent.

He said the consumer and small-business segment was driven bysales of identity theft protection, debt cancellation and cropinsurance products.

He said crop insurance still benefits from high commodity pricesand an analysis of crop damage from recent floods “is not aswidespread as it first appeared nor concentrated in counties andstates where we had significant exposure.”

Because of this, the company will not be making any specialprovision for crop insurance losses, and management remindedlisteners that the bulk of the risk is underwritten by reinsurersand the government.

The company also said it will pay a stock dividend of 34 cents ashare, up from a previous payment of 31 cents, on Sept. 1 toshareholders of record as of Aug. 8.