Customer Service skills that have moved back to FT are FAST (top producing financial professionals), WT or Wealth Transfers (non-retirement transfers such as death, registration changes, etc.) and next week VIP SH services. The contract with FIS requires that FAST and VIP be serviced by US staff. When VIP moves over, there is no more contractural requirement to keep remaining US staff on board. There are highly tenured FT Legacy US staff remaining whose applications to return to FT keep getting rejected. Why? FIS will retain the Retirements and Shareholder skills until the end of tax season. Tenured staff with those skills are needed to maintain service levels. Why else would staff with years of experience be repeatedly rejected from returning to the same roles at FT? This is the anxiety being felt among those staff members. FIS will no longer be servicing FT after May 2026. The remaining staff is highly demoralized. Teams have been consolidated into unmanageable groups. It seems likely that the final layoffs will be announced in March. It's a terrible way to treat people who were not responsible for any of the choices that led them here. One last important point, those rehired at FT are doing so with a pay cut. That's right. you can perform the skilled role at FT that you are performing now for less money. The benefits are better and the 401k match is higher (85%) but the salaries offered are lower. Make that make sense.
8 replies (most recent on top)
@rz The bpaas outsource follows a predictable pattern:
Vendor A make all kinds of promises to Customer and underbids the contract to win.
they then cut costs below what is needed to actually perform the service (i.e fire the people that actually know what was happening and could do things, and replace them with less people period, but also with junior people in cheaper locations).
underdelivering then happens.
eventually the customer gets fed up with a very poor quality service and decides to leave the outsource service.
@rz or just a bonus from this shitstorm. Which line item on the Annual Reports from FIS and FT will list these debacle? Will the shareholders notice? FIS CEO Stephanie Ferris announced another "powerful partnership" today in the most glowing terms. One would hardly notice her trying to kick the last smoking pieces of the FT catastrophe under the table.
Sounds like typical rebadge scam. I wouldn't be surprised if getting rid of expensive employees was the goal all along.
@eg FT = Franklin Templeton. FIS tried to take over handling FT's customer service calls and it ended up being an nightmare for FIS, FT, and FT's customers, so FT is taking it all back.
@eg anyone being affected directly knows exactly what they are and what it means. There is a big story here for anyone who wants to write it. Ignites? I am looking at you.
I guess I am ignorant. I have no idea what these acronyms are
@br Main Office Services and Customer Operations are staying at FIS. All calls will be routed back to FT sometime after the end of tax season. Or perhaps sooner. Whatever decision benefits FT the most, is what will happen. The question remains, how are FIS and FT explaining the millions of dollars wasted on this failed experiment to their shareholders? It never had to happen. So many long term legacy FT employees will be laid off. Lives have been damaged while senior leaders on both sides float above it with fat bonus checks to cash.
"FIS will no longer be servicing FT after May 2026" - but this is only for the mentioned FT CS groups? The rest like operations and support teams are staying?