That is why regulators won’t lift the assets cap and that’s why Charlie gets irritated when analysts ask about it. The second line of defense is not independent and despite all the superficial enhancement nothing is different. Regulators didn’t have the capacity nor the depth to regulate Wells either. At the very least, breaking up the bank should be in consideration. Asset cap is not going to get lifted anytime soon folks. When are we going to begin holding management accountable?
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"Risk Management is incompetent at Wells Fargo". You've just found that out? LOL
Regulators are just former bankers or consultants whose BS findings carry more significance than any of our internal checkers. These people are not some more experienced risk management folks.....they're just working for a different team and are full of id--ts just the same as we are here at WF. We just su-k so pathetically bad at performing and evidencing risk management that any id--t could find holes in our programs. We truly su-k at risk management, so much so that we can barely distinguish a process from a control in this company. We have no idea how to assess risk and assign risk to everything based upon hypothetical 'could happens' that have never been known to materialize.
Credit unions need to be allowed to expand beyond their state borders. Banks fail because they are profit-driven. Credit unions are a threat to banks because CU's are non-profit, so the banks all lobbied congress back in the day to write a nonsense law saying that CU's cannot expand beyond the borders of their state.
Why? Because banks don't want competition.
There is no legitimate reason to prevent the more responsible, more consumer oriented entity to be hamstrung while letting the profit oriented one to run amok. It's literally backwards. For-profit banks should be the ones banned by law from operating beyond state lines. No more "too big to fail" if no bank is allowed to grow beyond state borders.
No motivation for CU's to engage in risky behaviors since they are non-profit to begin with. CU's are the ones that should be nationwide and banks should be in-state only. We're living in backwards land.
The company is simply too big to manage. All of their fines, scandals, issues etc are the verdict on that.
The regulators are just as incompetent. If you look closely at all recent bank failures you will find regulators could have done more to mitigate and/or prevent it.
The truth is risk management is simply not the objective of Corporate risk leadership and neither do they have the talent for it. Look at the whole SERM group. What thought leadership do you expect from such mediocrities - creating paper to make paper to push paper. iTV is an insider joke within Corporate Risk. Compliance does not have a clue about laws and reg for its own activities, let alone the business as a whole. And Operational risk people are basically a bunch of plumbers in the wrong job … we can go on and on. The whole function can be cut by 40% and no one will notice. Yet there has never been any significant reorgs or redundancies in corporate risk. Why?
Because they have threatened management (sometimes implied, sometime direct) that they’ll create problems with the regulators and bring down this house of cards of consent orders and asset cap. Corporate risk function does not exist to do risk management. It exists to perpetuate their own propaganda.
The OCC and SEC need to start breaking up banks that fire employees like myself who worked in Divisional ORM, WFAS and RCSA and reported numerous violations of controls being rated effective when they were not and massive bullying by test leads to change test results. When I spoke up I was fired for not being a team player. Until the regulators start scraping away some of the teflon, Wells Fargo will continue to feel they can do anything without consequences, because they can... He Pokahauntus...... put your actions where your mouth was.
The sad thing is that all the risk groups at all companies are the same, but Wells is under the microscope
I'm convinced there is a group of toxic leaders that move from bank to bank and make each one worse, I saw a bunch move from BAC to WF, then they came to USAA and Citi....all regulatory nightmares and toxic cultures. The whole industry needs an overhaul and it starts with the regulators recognizing it and starting to ban these bad actors from the industry. Charlotte might be a good place to start.