NEW YORK—It began with the constant and compulsive pressure to sell. Then came stress-induced health problems. Wells Fargo employees, both current and former, say they spent every day frantically trying to persuade customers to open more accounts—not for any bonuses, but simply to keep their jobs.
Even in an industry known for performance demands, the sales goals were unprecedented. Employees described a near-obsessive focus from managers on a daily—or even hourly—basis about whether they were meeting the targets. The selling pressure was even put on tellers at the lowest employment levels of the bank, employees said.
It’s no surprise that Wells executives called each locations a “store” rather than a bank branch.
“Every single day the first question out of my manager was, how many appointments did I have today? How am I going to meet my goals?” said Mikey McGinn, who worked for Wells Fargo as a teller and a banker from 2007 until July of this year.
Wells Fargo’s operations are under scrutiny since it agreed to pay $185 million to federal and local authorities to settle allegations that bankers striving to meet the targets opened credit card and bank accounts, moved money between them and even created fake email addresses to sign people up for online banking—all without customer authorization. The news has reignited outrage in an American public and their representatives, still angry over the Wall Street scandals that spurred the recession. And this scandal doesn’t involve complicated financial products, but people’s regular checking and savings accounts and employees at the local branch.
Employees at the bank known for its stagecoach logo say the immense pressure to sell, coming directly from top executives, spurred them to push products customers did not need nor want. Many are angry that Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, castigated Tuesday by the Senate Banking Committee, has put the blame on retail bank employees and that more than 5,300 employees have been fired since the bank started investigating.
