Wire transfer - sent to the right account but wrong branch

Question

I recently had to wire funds for an investment from Canada to the US. I used my bank (Simplii Financial) to wire the funds to a Wells Fargo account.

I was asked to wire the funds to WFBIUS6S which is one of the Swift codes for Wells Fargo: https://www.wellsfargo.com/com/international/resources/routing-numbers/

My banks wire lookup function was based on ABA and not Swift so after I made the wire transfer, the confirmation page showed that the funds are being sent to PNBPUS3NNYC.

How does the above impact my wire? The account number at Wells was entered correctly. Should I be concerned the funds would be lost?

Answer 1

They will either get what you tried to accomplish, and send it forward to the right recipient; or they will return it to you, because the corresponding account doesn't exist at the SWIFT code you used.
As it's not someone's personal account but the bank itself, chances are good that you will have not a month-long odyssee of going after it - but it is always possible.

Lesson: always triple-check when making wire-transfers, and then check again.

Answer 2

Fattie wrote the following in a comment:

You're screwed. It's extremely unlikely the money will literally be lost forever, BUT, you now face an unbelievable PITA getting this fixed. Unfortunately you have to immediately start aggressively calling both your bank and the target bank. It is going to be hell for a week. The first crisis you face is that bank staff know nothing - literally nothing - about wire transfers, including those in the wire transfer departments. It will NOT unfortunately sort it out itself, you have to completely get on top of this. Sorry for the bad news :/