Heh, sadly enough, the pun didn’t occur to me. Wish it had!
Discovering banker bad behavior due to warped incentives should probably be some sort of recession indicator.
This of you who have Wells Fargo accounts, I hope you’ll switch banks after this.
I’d like to think I would if this happened at my bank.
Your bank just hasn’t found them yet.
For a time I worked at Wachovia before they merged with Wells Fargo. At that point customer service reps were expected to identify sales opportunities and transfer calls to the sales department. We’d get bonuses for every new account opened. The bigger, the better the payout. Since this was all being done over the phone it’s not hard to see how some would discretely open extra accounts for customers who had large balances where small amounts “wouldn’t be missed” in order to pump bonus pay. Most must have rationalized that they weren’t actually stealing money since it was all still under their name, just moved around a little. Obviously it’s still a poisonous practice, so I have to say I’m shocked at how widespread is apparently was in those departments.
A lot of people need to go to jail for this.
As usual, integrity runs downhill, and the real crooks get away with it.
This is why this country is going to radicalism.
Sure would we be nice if we could run the government like a business.
And hey, we actually have a candidate running for President who is a businessman.
/s
edit: typing is hard
I’m not surprised to see something like this. When quotas and metrics are what determine if you’ll get a paycheck next week, the temptation to trample others certainly heightens. Don’t get me wrong; such measurements have some value even if their common use can be dubious and even counter-productive at times. It’s just that an organization needs to be aware of how personal failures of character manifest in the workplace, how they can impact the business, and be ever on the lookout for them. The fact that such wrongdoing was so widespread means many people dropped the ball along the way, and that someone in upper management just couldn’t be bothered to care.
What’s particularly “impressive” is that apparently they often used wellsfargo.com email addresses when giving fake contact details, so clearly the system isn’t set up with even the most basic checks to prevent fraudulent account opening.
I recall the old credit card processor I used to work for, which was a subsidiary of a very large US bank. When selling accounts to people, associates had to collect their SSN or TIN as part of the process, for a variety of reasons (e.g., tax reporting), the most relevant of which to me was validating identity. Some changes could only be made by someone within a company who’d know the owner’s SSN, in the case of the smaller sole proprietorships, for instance.
So, of course, it was a real treat when scummy sales reps would fail to get the correct info, then just fake it by typing 123456789 into the SSN field. Nothing quite like a business owner calling to close his account–a security-check activity, of course–and being unable to do so, because he couldn’t give us “his” SSN.
Ugh, salespeople.
A motto to live by.
Welp, now I’m angry again today.
That ending line ‘In the financial industry the carrots are handed out freely, but the sticks remain locked up’ sums it up. I demand her pound of flesh for this outrage.
What i don’t understand is this issue has been known for years. Back when I wanted to enter the financial industry instead of my current industry, Wells Fargo had a lot of these high sales positions in place. Pretty much any minimal amount of research on individuals in these positions revealed that pressure was so high it was unattainable or they fell into immoral efforts to obtain them.
I’m guessing (totally off the cuff, I have zero knowledge of this sort of thing really) that these executives have contracts or terms of employment that are very specific about what they get, and that those terms can’t be changed unless they are formally charged and convicted of some crime; mere suspicion of a crime, or actually of a morally wretched but technically legal act, isn’t enough to void their contract. Or something like that.
Clearly we’re going to need Green Arrow to take care of this.
Warren is the hero we need but not the one we deserve.
The regulators could remove permissions for retail business and force Wells Fargo to sell its retail operations. Actions like this are not uncommon in places with independent regulators and consumer protection and well, a broad application of rule of law. The US doesn’t seem to have this, instead has a tiny fine and a few harsh words.
Here’s how it should be done.
Elizabeth Warren is a fucking hero. Doubt anything will happen to this prick or the prick that retired but we can always hope.