It's easy to look at the numbers surrounding the Wells Fargo scandal and be appalled. As an outsider, thinking about 2 million fraudulent accounts is shocking, and thinking about that affecting your hard earned money is downright terrifying. Take a moment, now, to think about those on the other end. What about those Wells Fargo employees that weren't involved in the scandal, didn't even know about the illegal activity before it surfaced, who now have their job security at stake and the reputation of their company completely deteriorated. Imagine working for one of the most esteemed, well established banks in the United States one day, and one of the most criticized and distrustful the next. Total career curveball. I spoke with a friend who happens to be in the middle of this mess. She has been working as a banker at a medium-large sized branch for nearly 2 years. They also work closely with approximately 20-30 other branches in the surrounding area. These are the deets:
1. The numbers were blown up.
Two million accounts were discovered to be "fraudulent", yes. But the term "fraudulent" is misleading. The big issue here was the creation of fake and unauthorized accounts, so it is easily assumed that this was the only type of fraudulence occurring. Not the case. Turns out, any account that was missing a signature for any reason or that had any piece of paperwork missing was marked as fraud. Without those, only about 135,000 were accounts set up purely unauthorized.
2. This mainly took place on the West Coast at the largest branches where small account changes could go unnoticed.
Though this has been a scary month for all Wells Fargo account holders (I don't blame them), her branch and the some-30 surrounding branches nearby had no knowledge of this occurring. She personally believes that language barriers could possibly have played a role in some part --if someone wanted to come in to set up one account, a banker would go ahead and set up multiple--a checking, a savings, a credit card, etc.--when maybe that's not exactly what the customer wanted at the time, but that was unclear to the banker. Maybe they did this with genuine good intention, and maybe this was to meet their aggressive sales goals. See number 3.
3. The Wells Fargo sales goals were ridiculously aggressive.
In one small state alone, her move from a smaller size bank to a medium-large size bank caused her sales goals to almost quadruple. She felt enormous pressure every day. Her managers would check in with her every 2 hours to monitor her progress. That's some serious stress. She and other workers in her office considered themselves retail sales people. They were referred to as a "store" rather than a "branch". Hmm...
4. There have been some big changes.
In her branch, and likely many, if not all others, sales goals no longer exist. They have geared fully towards regaining their customers' trust and proving their loyalty by dedicating themselves to customer service and people-oriented management. She has felt a 180 degree shift in this new low-pressure environment and finally feels as though their main concern is now with the customer benefit rather than bank benefit. I asked when she thought the sales goals would resurface, given that this is a business, and sales is the backbone of business, and she thinks that it will take many years for customers to regain enough trust in the bank for management to impose new sales motives. We'll see about that.
5. Uninvolved workers are glad that the scandal is out.
It released the pressure and the business is now about the customers. Given how high the standards were, she was not surprised that it happened. Though she didn't personally know anyone who created fraudulent accounts, her family was affected (for anyone who may be thinking she is biased, see how this affected her too). Someone handling banking for her dad randomly closed one of his accounts without reason and opened a new one, likely to earn sales points for themselves. This is also an example of how account fraud can occur on a much smaller scale.
6. People really are freaking out.
Don't mess with people's money--everyone knows that. This was a heck of a mess, though. She said one man ran into her bank demanding that his account had been falsified because he received 2 debit cards in the mail. He really had just reported his card lost twice and happened to have received both replacements consecutively. Her branch actually started calling their customers just to reassure them that their accounts were untouched to smooth the drama over more quickly. Cue a very stressful upcoming year(s) for Wells Fargo employees.
