Anyone know anything about layoffs in St. Louis? Apparently there was a Structural Study that started sometime last July. The announcement of those results to keep this location open or shut down the Earth City/St. Louis location at Corporate Woods would be announced the last week in March or first week in April.
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Bank update tomorrow. Should know more then.
Whether there is any reason to keep STL open can be debated. By way of comparison, I don't see any real "reason" to keep any of State Farm's offices open. They all pretty much s---.
There is no reason to keep STL. My guess is it will be gone with the structure study.
STL is in a unique position but I still think the site will close soon. SF does not care about the loss of a large talent pool when there are cheaper options elsewhere, despite their inexperience. The fact that the underwriting function ARE ran as a call center is ridiculous. They pay (albeit not much) for people to sit on the phone and get badgered by agency to make adjustments and accommodations that cannot be made. Fair lending is a useless term to agency but they try, try, and try again.
There are a number of other positions housed within that office, but agin, they are easily eliminated. They did extend another lease late last year but the cost to carry or break that is nominal in the grand scheme of things. Longer term, I expect the bank to go away completely.
To the original systems poster, I took no disrespect from your comment. All good!
To the obvious trolls... Yes, there are people who answer phones there... They are also still the largest site for mortgage consultants, processors, underwriters and closers in the company and by far the largest site for auto credit analysts. I also never stated that I felt the office would remain open, I just meant that it is not as simple to close as many seemed to think unless the Bank were to decide to cut volume in half, which could be a possibility., who knows. But to the one who mentioned PHX and ATL as comparable, then why can't they seem to build their staffing in those sites? People drop like flies in those sites...
I don't think anyone "missed the point," if the point is that the guy posting in here is a giant tool.
Structural study=kiss of death
I am @1jkh
You focused so much on my comment about it being a call center, you missed the point.
St Louis used to be a banking hub when Christ was a Corporal.
Today, there is a ton of people in hot job markets like PHX and ATL. This coupled with STL being too close to Blo/No makes it another ridiculously simple reason to close it.
Bye Felecia!
All someone in corporate has to do is look at a map and realize there are two hubs in the central time zone already . So it doesn’t make sense for st.louis to stay open they can just tell peons to move at their own cost to a hub or Leave . The St. Louis lease is almost up and it’s next to a hazardous waste dump that is on fire
Who knows... Maybe some a--hole can come in here and make a big fuss insisting that the sky is blue over and over again.... BUT IT'S BLUE GODDAMNIT!
IT'S F---ING BLUE I SAID!
Not sure who the last guy thinks he's disagreeing with.
One guy several posts down said it wasn't a call center. Since then, no one has disputed that fact, although one poster said he didn't mean anything disparaging by it, which is a fair enough statement, as there's nothing inherently derogatory about the term call-center.
Seems like the last poster just wants to troll people. Or perhaps is bipolar.
Sorry, not sorry.
They are a call center. They will not be around much longer. Cheaper and equally talented folks in ATL and PHX.
I certainly intended nothing derogatory when I referred to them as a call center, just to be clear. It's just always what I thought of it as. I'm sure other stuff goes on there as well, since I know not everyone is taking calls all day.
Either way, no harm intended.
Sorry... But the Corporate Woods Operations Center is a call center. They use SFCTI/Queue manager and answer calls via a Toll Free Number. I'm sure they would like to think they aren't a call center, but they are. Sorry again...
To the systems employee who posted above, not to come off wrong but that office is not a call center. It is the largest mortgage and auto loan originations site in the company.
My apologies. I used to work in that office, but I honestly had very little idea what everyone ELSE was working on as I was not a Bank employee. I was essentially leasing space there. All I know is that I would overhear the unit meetings and there was lots of discussion about call metrics. Plus, when I had my mortage with SF Bank, I would get routed to people on the third floor, who took my call.
So it seemed to me that there were lots of people in that office who were answering phones, and that it was (at last to some extent) a customer facing office, which of course did its business by taking calls from the outside and then following up by making other calls to various entities on the outside.
I know they had the call-center cubes. That's about the only thing I know for certain.
However, the fact that it's not JUST a call center makes it even more likely in my mind that they're going to move the whole thing to one of the hubs.
To the systems employee who posted above, not to come off wrong but that office is not a call center. It is the largest mortgage and auto loan originations site in the company.
I have not heard anything specific. But I do know that Bank business has been moved to one of the Hubs. Atlanta, I think? Anyway, given that the purpose of the hubs is to consolidate things as much as possible in a single (or two at most) geographic location, I don't see why they would keep the call center in St. Louis. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I'm speaking as a Systems employee; The locations or Bank business and systems were part of what was shared with us several months ago.
There are some peculiar items scheduled for next week. I do not think the future looks promising.