Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Who's making 250m?

My friend at WFA has been offered 3m+ by UBS and Morgan Stanley...he'd be crazy not to take it.

Comment below is correct. Wells Fargo is currently offering some of the highest recruiting packages for Financial Advisors in the industry.

Post ID: @gev+17AedzkU

You sound opinionated yet uninformed.

Wells Fargo is currently offering increasingly high upfront packages to FAs to bring their business over to Wells. And other firms are doing the same, often between $1million to $4 million per FA. Wells Fargo, RBC and JP Morgan are currently offering 300%, while RAJA and smaller regional firms are offering 150%.

Wells incentivizes it’s FAs to focus on wealthier clients and penalizes FAs for working with accounts less than $250,000.

Additionally WFC opened their own RIA channel in an attempt to stem the outflow of FAs and and assets.

Most firms state, publicly, that the pandemic has not yet affected the aggressiveness of their recruiting deals.

I am not an FA. And I know you certainly are not. You and I are a cost to the firm and I understand that puts us at risk with the current state of affairs at Wells Fargo.

But I am smart enough to be informed about the business I am in.

If you make 250k plus your probably getting a 40k net bonus. Probably getting restricted stock /stock options too each year totalling the same. Your 6% match on your 250k salary is 15k you aren’t getting. If you can’t put some of those other incentives away you are getting, What are you doing? Living a Jordan Belfourt from the Wolf of Wall Street lifestyle???

The biggest concern I have is the same people who came up with id–tic scheme are the same ones who are in charge of fixing this place. Using Chuckles' own words

Embrace Candor (FAIL)
Build a High Performing team (unless you change that to Highly Paid Cronies it is a FAIL)
Be great at Execution (FAIL unless the plan is to k–l the Stagecoach)

It was an opportunity for the leaders (how do you type that) to put out a real email instead of what they did - they look like the id–ts and folks they like to make fun off - you know us lowly team members, I mean employees. It actually terrifies me how tone deaf they are.

Its like back in the day they needed to cut expenses so they fired the drivers and had a BBQ and ate the horses while patting themselves on their expense cutting not realizing that they now were out of business. My fear is that these people are worse than what we had before.

Shocking... upset advisors tell a magazine for advisors that they are upset about something and try to take credit for getting it changed. Please... there aren’t that many of them and they aren’t very profitable.

I would like to see employees inundate Charlie with questions for the upcoming Townhall. They can be presented professionally, but still ask the questions. Let them know we are not sheep being led to slaughter who are too afraid to speak up.

What is the real story behind the reversal of the 401K decisions? Why only a partial reversal?
Is it true that you are not interested in wealth clients because they don’t generate enough profit?
Can we have a Q and A newsletter on Teamwork’s?
Is the firm looking at changing any future employee benefits?
Any talks about reducing severance?
Will the sale of Asset Management correlate to a smaller RIF?
Questions about forced rankings
Request more frequent communication and transparency from Charlie

Not that this is the whole story but the news reports state:

“The decision came two days after Wells announced termination of the corporate benefit in a late afternoon email on Wednesday, provoking what managers and brokers at Wells Fargo Advisors said was a storm of internal protest.”

I really doubt this had anything to do with employee feedback. Everyone should know by now that they do not care. They need people to leave, it doesn’t matter who.

Wealth clients really don’t generate much profit, and Commercial banking customers are very unlikely to leave because of a relationship manager. People just have a very hard time accepting that they are interchangeable and replaceable.

The change in direction is regulatory or political.

I agree with you, OP: The thought that the higher wage earners have more influence at the company than the lower wage earners would have ever had. I always think that the higher wage earners have the connections at the firm, and the confidence to go straight to the top. The lower wage earners could have more power, too, if we could find a way to operate as a group.

I have a feeling there is more going on there than we will ever know. Per a story on Advisorhub, they were as highly criticized for their lack of communication with the leaders across the various LOBs, as they were for the changes themselves.

It makes Charlie and team look disorganized, ineffective, non- communicative to his leaders across the organization. So. I am ok with it. A few more missteps, and hopefully he is out.

@mhk OP here. I agree with you entirely, this post is not that I am in favor of these benefits being taken from this earning class. It is more related to my concerns about the precedent being set with a quick retraction and what must’ve happened in the background. To be clear: I believe that these wage earners DO NOT deserve in any way to have this taken from them and I agree that it has begun to resemble socialism.

@mhk see above comments. I believe it is you who reeks of entitlement.

@mhk+17AedzkU you got a raise?

2020 was only the second time on my 20+ year career I got zero merit increase. First time ever while being rated at exceeds.

You reek of entitlement.

OP I would suggest you take a look the medical rates- anyone making over 100k (which includes bonus) pays considerably more. They're basically just nickel and diming higher paid workers and enough is enough. The majority of the folks in this income level contribute to charities on their own and are generally very helpful to those who may be "less fortunate" but at the same time many have worked very hard (at the expense of their families/balance) to get to the level they are at and often high multiple degrees. We're not in a socialist society, altough it's starting to feel more and more that way. I'm sorry you're offended the decision got reversed so quickly but you must have forgotten that they have given raises over the last 2 years, lowered medical premiums and now even added considerable profit sharing to those making under less. The problem is you can only take so much; and it certainly wasn't "industry norm" which Is what they were trying to say and my guess is that's more of the reason it was changed vs specific backlash.

@gbm if that were the case they wouldn’t have just laid off relationship managers in Wholesale Banking. It was a bloodbath. All of them have contacts and relationships. They will get hired elsewhere and take those relationships with them. WF doesn’t care

@ipy OP here, this isn’t about money. It is about risk and ethics. Also, I’m doing fine.

Do they if a teller leaves? No. Dime a dozen. Do they care if top-dollar producers leave and take their clients' money with them? H3ll yes.

@qpw do you honestly think they care if people leave? They care less now than ever.

I could sell my truck and save the money not spent on gas, insurance, and maintenance. However, I've lost my ability to drive to wirk(when that becomes a thing again). It's cost me money by being short-sighted. I think the real issue is that the OP has made poor life choices and is jealous of more successful people.

They threatened to leave because it is a basic benefit that is standard across our peers in the industry, and for only 5% of the total cuts needed (by your math) we would lose a significant number of revenue generators, some of whom would inevitably take their business contacts with them on their way out the door. It’s not worth risking losing high net clients over 20k per employee, at least not yet.

250M is not incorrect. M = 1,000, MM = 1,000,000. K also = 1,000, just not Roman numeral notation.

@1tr nope. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/mm-millions/

250K you mean, not 250M