Wells Fargo & Co's top two executives kicked off their investor day by reassuring Wall Street that Wells Fargo is a more stable and less risky company than other big banks.

"You can't take outsized risk in the financial services industry," chief financial officer Timothy Sloan, in shirtsleeves and speaking without a script, told investors assembled in New York Tuesday morning, just over a week after JP Morgan Chase reported that a bet on credit default swaps went badly wrong. "We have less risk than our peers."