Last year, in the wake of a massive scandal over fake accounts, Wells Fargo said that it planned to change its employee compensation plan, de-emphasizing the sales goals that led to 5,000 of the bank’s former employees opened as many as 2 million credit card and bank accounts without authorization in order to get sales bonuses.
When Wells Fargo made that announcement in September, the details on the changes were scarce, but a new report from the Wall Street Journal states that the bank is ready to roll out on its new comp plan, one without sales goals.
Here’s the Wall Street Journal with details:
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo is in the process of completing the final parts of the new plan, which will focus on customer service, customer usage and growth in primary balances, some of these people said. Before the scandal, which became public in September, retail bank employees had to meet lofty sales goals, which included selling eight banking products per household.
As the WSJ article notes, Wells Fargo’s business has suffered in the wake of the scandal, which led to the bank being fined $185 million and other significant changes, including regulatory and Congressional onslaughts.
But now Wells Fargo is ready to announce some changes to its operation.
Here’s the WSJ again:
In terms of the compensation overhaul, Ms. Mack (Mary Mack, the new head of retail banking at Wells Fargo) is scheduled to host an event in Dallas next week with regional retail-banking leaders from across the country. She is expected to lay out details of the new plan at this gathering, although the framework will continue to evolve in coming months, some of the people familiar with the matter said.
By the end of the first quarter, the bank hopes to have the broad strokes of a larger program to identify and design what a great customer experience looks like and consistency around that, the people said.
