Do you remember a few years ago when the bank changed multiple procedures surrounding deposit migrations for major risk and compliance reasons where people were manipulating incentives? At that time, branch managers lost the ability to initiate or process them directly, and regional leadership could no longer broadly approve deposit migrations without reviewing supporting documentation. Managers also previously had visibility into tracking deposits moving to and from their centers and had to agree to it.
That level of transparency no longer exists. Branch managers are now unable to view the underlying details, while area and regional leadership still appear to have the ability to add deposits to certain branches’ goals and remove them from others — all with little visibility or oversight. Unless someone knows how to navigate obscure reports, they may never even notice these adjustments taking place. Even then, managers can only see the dollar impact per week, not the supporting account information or documentation that justified the monthly deposit area/region migration, as was available years ago. These detailed reports are only visible to area managers and above now. If your area manager chooses to not disclose to you anything, you’ll never know what’s going on behind the scenes. If you do find out from your own research, you’ll never know why and they may never answer you with a direct answer if you caught some funny business.
This has become increasingly concerning because many strong-performing managers feel like they are working hard without seeing results reflected fairly. Some who investigated further discovered that their branches had unfavorable deposit migrations applied against them with no clear explanation provided. When questions are raised, responses are often vague, evasive, or framed as “for valid reasons” without identifying the accounts or rationale involved to the effected branch or manager.
What makes the situation more troubling is that some of the branches seeing repeated goal increases through these regional or area-level deposit migrations tend to be branches that have strained relationships with leadership due to the branches having a low appetite to engage in unscrupulous behavior. Meanwhile, pawn branches viewed more favorably by leadership have reportedly received repeated goal reductions through the same behind-the-scenes process. These changes can apparently be made quietly with a few clicks, without disclosure, communication, or accountability to the affected branches. When clarification is requested, there seems to be little transparency and few direct answers.
We were informed that in situations where a previous branch held deposits in December but later lost them, credit can shift between branches based on where the client previously maintained balances. For example, if you bring a client’s funds to your branch by selling them another product at a different branch, the credit for those deposits may be reassigned to the other branch depending on prior year balances regardless that those balances were lost earlier in this year.
We were also told there is no formal distinction between “new” and “existing” money in certain tracking systems, and that current reporting tools may not fully reflect these scenarios yet. As a result, even if a client transfers funds from an existing account at another cost center into a newly opened account, those new money funds may still be added back to your goal by area and region because the system doesn’t recognize new money in the rules yet, if it was spent in the first few months of the year and you had an actual new money event with your client.
In practice, this also means that even when new funds are deposited into an account opened with transferred balances—and those balances are used immediately—the full amount may still be credited back toward the originating branch’s goals under current accounting or reporting rules and added back as a goal to yours, meanwhile you already had it reduced when it left days after the account opening.