SAN FRANCISCO–Wells Fargo has been running national advertising announcing its seen the errors of its ways and been reborn, and its CEO just told Congress it has embarked on a fresh start. Its employees, however, say it ain’t so.
As CUToday.info has reported extensively, Wells Fargo has been mired in numerous scandals for several years, beginning with the firing of more than 5,000 employees as part of a scandal involving the creation of more than 3.5-million bogus accounts as those employees struggled to meet aggressive sales goals. It has also mistakenly foreclosed on homeowners, forced customers to buy unnecessary auto insurance and misbehaved in so many other ways the Federal Reserve made the rare move of slapping an asset growth cap on the big bank.
Wells Fargo has paid more than $1.5 billion in fines and $620 million in lawsuits.
Wells Fargo said it is a changed institution. But its employees told The New York Times they continue to feel heavy pressure to get as much money out of customers as possible. The Times said it interviewed 17 current and former employees and also reviewed internal documents in the course of its reporting.
Failing to Hit Goals
In Des Moines, Iowa, where wells Fargo has a large debt collection operation, workers have had their quotas raised to 33 calls per hour and $40,000 in credit card and other debt recovered each month. Internal records show most employees failed to hit those goals.
Mark Willie, who works in the office and who is part of a group attempting to unionize Wells Fargo employees called the “Committee for Better Banks, told the Times, “For us front-line workers, there’s an overwhelming sense of frustration. There is a general fear of retaliation for speaking out.”
Two mortgage-processing employees in Minneapolis told the Times their managers pressured their team to send documents that they knew contained incorrect information to borrowers to meet internal deadlines.
The Times further reported that in a survey of more than 27,000 employees in the bank’s information-technology department late last year, top concerns included their ability to raise grievances with managers and whether “Wells Fargo conducts its business activities with honesty and integrity.”
Lots of Complaints on Internal Blog
“Workers recently flooded the bank’s internal blog with hundreds of angry comments about Wells Fargo’s sales incentives, pay and ethics and leaders’ ‘doublespeak,’” the Times reported after reviewing screenshots of the blog.
Wells Fargo executives told the Times in interviews that the bank’s culture had improved and that fewer bank employees had direct financial incentives to sell products to customers. “Our entire system of how we pay, coach and develop team members is designed to focus on customer experience and customer outcomes,” Mary Mack, Wells Fargo’s head of consumer banking, was quoted as saying. “Things have changed a lot.”
Mack told the Times none of the debt-collecting employees in the Des Moines group had lost their jobs last year for not meeting the goals. She declined to comment on the Minneapolis mortgage processors, but said the bank investigates employees’ allegations.
Wells Fargo also said that branch workers who were eligible for bonuses in the past based on cross sales are now encouraged to make referrals and can earn a bonus if the referral turns into a sale. There are also bonuses for overall branch performance.
Employees, meanwhile, told the Times they were unhappy with the pressure on their own pay when the Wells Fargo’s CEO, Timothy Sloan, was paid more than $17 million in 2017, up 36%.