Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

the MRAs are a joke. all that time and effort, gold stars on the foreheads of those that get the closing packages through, but in the end it is a worthless paperwork exercise that does little to fix anything except keep contractors and capability teams busy. place is full of liars and crooks.

"Promote the best and get rid of the worst performers yearly"

Its tough to weed out poor performers when the people who are lifer manager are the problem and who try to stomp out new people who bring in new ways of thinking and fresh ideas.

@buo Thanks for the shoutout for Legal. I completely agree and we are not pulled into issues often enough to mitigate all the absolute stupidity happening daily. Are most of us honest and hardworking? Yes. Unfortunately, there is an enormous level of corner cutting and frankly, lying that goes on just to weazel out of doing what’s right. How about this one? A tax team asked if we legally had to pay a properties taxes. Hmmm? Jeez.

In regards to the OP’s question, it is true what is being posted below. It’s not in WF’s control. Sometimes, we ask questions and do not tell you it is centered around an MRA. This is one reason you see senior leaders saying they’t sure when it will end. It is so complex and there are so many matters, it’s difficult to comprehend how far along the company is, especially since things can go wrong and stall. I’ve had teams say, “oh, yes, we always XYZ!” Just to find they don’t. You want transparency? It starts with operations being transparent with what the he-l they are doing. We operating in this “run it like you own it” model for so long that they do and they are the only ones that know what they are doing and about 75% of the time, THEY don’t know WHY.

@2zwc+16N2Nywc Of course my example was not to suggest that we should be able to share outside but just to illustrate how strict and to the letter things are.

I agree with you about not having clear goals and direction - which is incompetent management, plain and simple. Sharing the MRAs broadly doesn't fix that, because someone has to be accountable for defining the all-up "how" to solve the problem. My bet is that you will start to see these leaders "retire" or "leave to pursue other opportunities" as they fail to meet their deadlines... new management has made it abundantly clear that there will no longer be tolerance for it - the repeated missing of deliverables to the regulators is why we just have gotten into deeper trouble the past four years instead of getting out.

@1zuh+16N2Nywc sort of.... the regulatory agencies’ rule is that MRA and all regulatory enforcement action is not to be shared outside of the firm nor with other government agencies unless the issuing agency consents to that. It’s very common for OCC examiners to read FRB letters and vice versa and sit on joint examinations where the underlying problem is discussed. My point was more about WFC dysfunctional secrecy and lack of trust amongst its own employees who are expected to fix the problems contained in these regulatory matters. Many times those employees (not “team members” to embrace the new expectations) are working on projects without clear goals and direction in the holy name of “need to know”. Project leadership is clueless about what we are trying the solve for. The result is a failed project more often than not. That was the main point not whether or not MRA should be shared a outside Wells. That’s obviously a dumb idea.

the actual MRAs and MRIAs are confidential supervisory info. how this is allowed to be shared (or not) is dictated by the regulators - period. A recent hire for an op comm position commented in a meeting I was in that even though he had to be interviewed by and approved by the regulators, he was not permitted to see any of the supervisory documents until he actually started as an employee... even though by accepting this position he assumes responsibility for all of the open consent orders, MRAs, etc that are in his domain.

Do you guys not have to take the confidential supervisory information (csi) training? WFC has been best over the head by the regulators the last few years for not having proper controls of csi. You want the regulatory headwinds to prolong, sure, just share MRA info all over.

@awl - The problem in the secrecy isn’t necessarily caused by WF. It’s a requirement of the regulators.

You can’t even share information about the MRAs with other regulators (so an OCC one shouldn’t be discussed with the FRB) even though they all sit in on the same calls.

It’s insanely stupid but that’s the government for you. The Reg Relations team has to sort all of that sh– out prior to each meeting.

Visa does one thing, facilitate EFTs.

Wells Fargo does literally thousands of things like make mortgages, loan money in the form of credit cards, issue and maintain DDA accounts, process ACH, manage giant commercial accounts, and on and on. It’s just not even a comparison.

As a project manager, though not in a Risk, I reciprocate your dim view.

In at least two projects I was assigned to, the Risk person and or Compliance person was a total failure and did not help me escalate many problems with some unethical and illegal things the business leaders wanted to push onto employees. They just ignored it, and in some cases actually helped the business pursue something that definitely would have gotten the bank sued. Thankfully, I am smart enough to go to Legal and ER who stepped up and directly k–led what the business leaders wanted to do.

It seems like I know a lot more about how the bank works, so there’s that too. There is also the small matter of the fact that the asset cap is specifically because of failures in risk management. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

I never understood the whole secrecy about the MRA and MRIAs. I’m in Risk and we are expected to review and credibly challenge the corrective action plans and often create plans for ourselves. In most cases, that happens without any visibility over what is the actual problem which the corrective plan is supposed to fix. All in the holy name of Confidentiality and “need to know”. I call BS. The lack of transparency leads to abuse by corrupt managers that are more interested in driving their personal agendas. I have seen at least one team in TTIRO be funded and hire highly paid resources on the premise to fulfill some vague MRA testing commitment which turned out to be completely made up once I was able to read the actual MRA itself. I am sure if others have had the same visibility they would call BS too. No wonder why WF keeps failing remediation of very elementary MRAs.