If anyone has access to this article, can you please share it with us?
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🤣 These responses were written by BDs communications team. He is not that polished or concise IRL. As a parade of talented communicators walk out (or let go) and join competitors, we'll eventually be left with BD having to do interviews all by himself. That should be entertaining.
What a softball interview. Too bad the reporter didn’t ask him why WFC’s reputation is still in the tank, why he hired a terrible head of Corp Comms who made it worse with her air head ideas and that his leadership team in public affairs is a total failure.
You can tell his answers were written and submitted by the Comms team. It is impossible he spoke this coherently, because BD can’t stop himself from saying cringe worthy comments. If you only knew the clean up in Public Affairs every time he does a Town Hall or speaks publicly.
No denying, you just heard from one of the top people in all of Wells. Layoffs are coming. It is now a fact.
Lol Bill Daley lives in that one lunatic's head rent-free
So they bring in a corrupt political animal (Bill Daley) to work with corrupt politicians, spin lies and grease palms.....But, apparently his contacts in DC are ignore him or he's not paying enough.
Decent article. As usual, I learn more about internal strategies from news articles than I hear directly from the C- Suite.
At least Charlie hired someone who is more comfortable speaking publicly and giving interviews than Charlie seems to be.
I am someone who is always critical of Charlie. I think I (and maybe others) would be more receptive if he/they communicated more and were more transparent.
Note to Management: Secrecy breeds distrust, division and rebellion. A transparent and truthful communication strategy fosters trust and could help to achieve better Buy-in.
What does all this mean in terms of potential staffing cuts headed into 2022?
We’re a pretty inefficient organization compared to other big banks. This is public knowledge, it’s been acknowledged in different publications. We’ve begun to expense control to try to bring our numbers down. We have way more employees than our competitors who are much more efficient and effective and do a better job at a lot of things. We’re in the middle of that, that’s multiyear. We don’t have a number to cut but we’re trying to make ourselves more efficient and effective.
At the same time, we're hiring in rather large numbers nationally but we’re in uncharted waters. What is the post-pandemic world going to look like? Are people going to want to go back into the office, do the jobs they were doing before? It's going to be a challenging couple of years, there's no question. I think anybody who thinks we're going back, however you want to define what “going back” was, ain't gonna happen.
Thank you!!!
https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2021/09/19/wells-fargo-q-and-a-bill-daley-recovery-pandemic.html
'We’re in uncharted waters': Wells Fargo exec discusses employee cuts, branch closures, rumors of HQ relocation
By Laura Smythe – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal Sep 19, 2021, 8:11pm EDT
As it looks to restore its public image in the wake of a series of scandals in recent years, Wells Fargo & Co. is continuing to draw attention to itself with another federal fine and calls from U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for the Federal Reserve to break up the bank.
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) is the Philadelphia region's largest retail bank with nearly $34 billion in deposits, employing about 6,000 people locally. Its CEO Charlie Scharf has worked to revamp the institution including by restructuring it into five lines of business and cutting expenses to keep up with competitors like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The Business Journal recently sat down with Vice Chairman of Public Affairs Bill Daley, a former White House chief of staff in the Obama administration, to talk about Wells Fargo’s efforts to recover from recent debacles, including its “damning” fake accounts scandal.
Below are additional key takeaways from Daley about the bank’s journey forward in a pandemic world. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What do small businesses, especially minority-owned enterprises, need from their banks now in the pandemic?
Right now they’re just trying to survive. Community development financial institutions usually turn around and lend money to their customers, but now they’re seeing the need isn't so much a loan as much as a grant, just to help them stay alive. A lot of small businesses in Philadelphia have gone away, and when you get into communities of color many of these are really small businesses. They’ve struggled with employment, getting people to work. We’re trying to work with lots of organizations and come up with ways, whether it's granting money or changing lending standards, to try to be there for small businesses.
What strategy is Charlie Scharf using to move Wells Fargo forward from challenges of recent years?
Charlie came into a very difficult situation with a company that is the third-largest bank in the country asset wise, but with a challenged regulatory situation. He’s very focused, disciplined and went about this in a way that you would expect. Nobody expects a pandemic, it was a curveball to all of us. The first thing he did was make some dramatic leadership changes; his operating committee is about two-thirds of people who came in from outside. Of the top 200 people in the bank, 100 are new or have new jobs. That’s how you move one of these big institutions: you’ve got to get control of people and move people in who have experience.
He also was challenged with the need for diversity. We now have three people of color on our operating committee and a fourth coming on. There was also a sense of needing to make some change in the diversity of our products, and appealing to communities of color.
What did you learn from your time in politics about building back from crises that you can now apply at Wells Fargo?
At any big institution you’ve got to have a team that you are comfortable with and depend on. For Charlie to build that was the biggest challenge. It’s different in that when you come into a crisis and everyone you’re bringing in comes into a crisis, you can’t do it, to be frank, as the administrations are able to when they change relatively immediately. It took Charlie getting the right team starting in October 2019 through today. You can’t predict things. When you think things are going great, something’s going to happen. That’s what happens in a big company, as it does in government. You just have to try to get prepared for whatever comes at you.
What do you anticipate for the future of online and mobile banking, and how could that impact branch operations?
Some people have been predicting the end of branches forever. Lots of people still like to engage in going into a branch to talk to people, have questions answered, make their financial transaction in person. There’s no doubt online and mobile banking is rising generationally substantially. That younger generation doesn’t have the need for what resources may be in a branch for payroll or things like that. Our branch consolidation that’s happened is more about right-sizing to where people live and where our customers are.
It’s a big challenge for institutions like ours because these new fintechs and other groups that are just using technology don’t have the same infrastructure. Nobody demands them to have a branch in a certain neighborhood or engage in communities like we do. Whether that historic model is going to change is something that may or may not happen in the coming years, but it will have a lot of ramifications in communities that some people may not realize right now.
What does all this mean in terms of potential staffing cuts headed into 2022?
We’re a pretty inefficient organization compared to other big banks. This is public knowledge, it’s been acknowledged in different publications. We’ve begun to expense control to try to bring our numbers down. We have way more employees than our competitors who are much more efficient and effective and do a better job at a lot of things. We’re in the middle of that, that’s multiyear. We don’t have a number to cut but we’re trying to make ourselves more efficient and effective.
At the same time, we're hiring in rather large numbers nationally but we’re in uncharted waters. What is the post-pandemic world going to look like? Are people going to want to go back into the office, do the jobs they were doing before? It's going to be a challenging couple of years, there's no question. I think anybody who thinks we're going back, however you want to define what “going back” was, ain't gonna happen.
How do you see hospitality businesses and other sectors faring now?
You had two economies going on at the same time, and to a large degree still do. The people-contact businesses were very challenged, and then you had outlying businesses and those less dependent upon personal contact skyrocketing. That person-to-person economy is still very challenged whether it’s tourism, hotels, restaurants, cruise lines, airlines.
We all thought three, four months ago that by the holiday season everyone would be roaring back into retail stores and other places where you have contact. That seems to maybe not be the case, which will slow down the general economy and recovery that people were predicting, which was going to be so vibrant, so strong. There were predictions of eight to 10% GDP growth. The economy is still strong; I think the Delta variant will have an impact on that massive growth that people thought was going to come.
Are there any plans to relocate headquarters? (There was some conjecture after Scharf brought in new leadership from the New York area).
Headquarters is in San Francisco, and Charlotte had more employees than San Francisco did for a long time. So Charlotte’s a big base for us, and New York with a number of the operating committee members. We have, I think, 16,000 people in Minneapolis, 11,000 in Des Moines, we have a big presence in Phoenix. So, no, there's no plans to move the headquarters, and in today's world everybody seems to want to be wherever they want to be.