Wells Fargo Still the Biggest Jerk on the Block

 At the height of a reckoning over race and police killings in the U.S., Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf tried to blame his bank’s failure to hire and promote African Americans on black people themselves.  “While it might sound like an excuse, the unfortunate reality is that there is a very limited pool of black talent to recruit from,” he said in a memo to employees this summer, uncovered by Reuters.

Observers believe Scharf should have known better, especially at Wells Fargo, where hiring “talent” doesn’t really seem like it was ever a priority. The bank has been poorly run by white people for more than a decade, and it has repeatedly been accused of racial discrimination in hiring and lending, paying out millions in claims.

Statements like Scharf’s aren’t just false ― they’re pernicious. Companies often blame the “pipeline” for their own failures to hire people of color and perpetuate stereotypes about black people, which makes it harder for people of color if they do end up getting hired.  “It’s such a lazy and quite frankly racist justification or excuse,” said Mehrsa Baradaran, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in banking law.  

Not only is this so-called “pipeline” excuse a way to lay the blame for the bank’s failures on people of color; it also perpetuates the idea that the bank is some kind of perfect meritocracy in which white people just happen to be the most talented workers.

Wells Fargo has been charged with racial discrimination numerous times.  In August of this year, the bank paid $7.8 million over claims that it had discriminated against 34,193 black applicants in hiring. Last year, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $600,000 over more claims of race and sex discrimination against 2,300 female and minority candidates.  The bank has claimed that it has since changed its hiring practices.

Wells Fargo also has a history of discriminating against Black homebuyers. In 2012, the bank paid $175 million to settle claims that it had discriminated against Black and Latino borrowers during the run-up to the housing crash in 2008. This was the second-largest settlement with the Justice Department of its kind at the time.

The insinuation that Wells Fargo only hires the best is dubious, considering the company’s many missteps. In just the past few years, the bank has admitted to mistakenly foreclosing on hundreds of families, illegally repossessing tens of thousands of cars, and fraudulently opening up accounts for people without asking, Zach Carter noted in HuffPost last year.

“The bank has undertaken at least four separate marketing campaigns aimed at improving its dreadful corporate image, issuing official apology after official apology for its litany of abuses,” he wrote. 

Scharf is the fourth CEO Wells Fargo has hired since 2016 when it got mired in a fraud scandal. The bank has struggled to turn a profit as its competitors have thrived. Wells Fargo’s reputation has been so damaged in recent years that it had a hard time even finding a CEO to run the place. (All the top candidates were white men, by the way.)  

“The idea that Wells Fargo is seeking the best talent and is a meritocracy is a joke,” said Baradaran, who worked with top banks during the financial crisis at a major Wall Street law firm. “Pay attention to this company and their culture for the last decade. There’s a corrupt culture there,” she said.