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Mortgage brokers have gotten somewhat of a bad rap with the implosion of the mortgage industry but they do solve some real world problems. First, a broker will usually know the idiosyncrasies of the lenders that they work with. This helps because as a consumer you usually don't discover those idiosyncrasies until after application and you end up having to submit your loan to another lender. If you are a vanilla borrower that is well qualified, this might not make much of a difference but when it comes to past credit issues or self-employed borrowers there can be a wide variations in lender treatment. If you have a really quirky scenario, working with a broker may be your only option because checking around with many lenders is just not a viable option and brokers are good at identifying niche lenders.Another important issue is pricing. A broker can and should find you the best pricing for your specific scenario. You can price it with multiple website but pricing quotes on the Internet not be 100% accurate to your scenario and you usually cannot lock prior that rate prior to application. So you end up applying to the lender with the best pricing at that time but pricing changes daily and that may not be the best deal by the time you are able to lock. Brokers can put your loan application together and then check the market for the best pricing and lock the loan prior to submitting to a lender. If pricing changes dramatically or you loan is denied, they may be able submit your loan to another lender that has the best pricing at that time. All under one application.It should be noted that brokers usually get wholesale pricing rather than retail pricing which means that their fee does not necessarily make their pricing less competitive than retail pricing. Also brokers often work on smaller margins that the big banks in order to keep their pricing competitive.

The country was shocked in 2016 when Wells Fargo was exposed for opening more than 3 million fake bank accounts.I was not.Three years prior in 2013, we were overwhelmed with applications from Wells Fargo employees.Wells Fargo had a large processing office several miles away from one of our offices. We needed office staff in a bad way and initially, felt the surge of applicants might be fortuitous for us.During the financial crisis, Wells Fargo stood out in the right way. While their competitors took undue risk, Wells Fargo grew responsibly and largely stayed away from the type of loans that would bring down the financial system.They had great people who were loyal and executive leadership who played the long game. Their reputation was spotless coming out of the crisis.Once we started interviewing their people four years later, it was clear just how far that vaunted culture had fallen.People weren’t so much interviewing as they were begging us to save them from an abusive relationship.At first, I thought we just ran into a few disgruntled employees. I’m usually skeptical of someone who is overly critical of their employer in an interview.People who love to complain about former companies or bosses tend to keep right on complaining once they get into the next company.This was different.“We are all doing the work of two people because so many people are leaving. But, we are not allowed to work overtime and our targets went up dramatically.”Reduce people, increase work, ratchet up performance expectations and tell people they can’t work longer. This is a great recipe for short term stock gains and long term implosion.“Supervisors fight over credit for everything. We are encouraged not to collaborate with employees from other teams. If we sit next to someone on another team at lunch, we have to answer questions from our supervisor immediately after.”Spark a competitive culture so cut-throat that you pit your own employees against each other. Drive the opposite of teamwork where people fend for themselves and wait for others to get fired first.“I spend as much time tracking my time for supervisors as I do working. I have to log in to software every time I go to the bathroom. They track how many breaks we take and for how long. I haven’t felt like this since elementary school.”Fix every business issue with more metrics, objectives, tracking and reporting. Report on how many reports have been reported on. Create positions whose sole value is creating and distributing the reports. Tie managers up in daily meetings to explain the reports. Then report on the meetings.Literally, report on how many piss breaks your employees take.This also has the added benefit of spending less on coffee as people just can’t afford to take the risk of more trips to the bathroom.Many of the folks trying to leave had 10–20 years with the company under their belt. This normally equates to great candidates. An employee who is loyal to one company is more likely to be loyal to the next.We hired several.Most didn’t work out.It turns out that the culture had been this way for years and kept getting worse every year.Most of the people left in this particular office in 2013 were those individuals who were not confident enough to leave three years earlier. Top talent had been leaving for years and turnover was so high at Wells Fargo, that they started to value loyalty above performance.Anyone willing to stick it out through that period got to stay, regardless of performance.We quit hiring anyone from that office. Most were simply poor performers whose only redeeming attribute was an uncanny ability to withstand pain.The others came across as too tainted with what a “normal office” culture should be.Spending the entire interview complaining, it was clear that they found pleasure in the drama that unfolded at their company. The same would obviously apply if they joined us.Culture like this starts at the top.The CEO pushes for more and more from his top lieutenants. Legitimate business obstacles are shunned as excuses.The message gets pushed down the ladder and the company quickly gets misaligned like a set of wheels that’s been on the road too long.Executives don’t go anywhere near the front line, hiding in their corporate palace. When they do, employees don’t feel safe enough to be honest with them.Targets get raised. Compensation is linked to the targets. Jobs are threatened.A few supervisors go rogue and start suggesting that employees open a few accounts for high income customers. Employees push back at first. They call the “HR hot line”. They get labeled as complainers and are pushed out.Those remaining see how bravery is rewarded and take their supervisor’s direction.This supervisor is rewarded with a bonus, promotion or contest trip.A few other supervisors see the new strategy working and want to keep up. The scam spreads like a virus.When it is exposed, the CEO blames the employees as “bad stewards of our culture”. He goes on to say “The 1% that did it wrong, who we fired, terminated, in no way reflects our culture.”The CEO makes it clear that he never personally asked anyone to open a fake account and knew nothing about the situation. He refuses to accept the fact that he is responsible for a culture where over 5,000 employees committed fraud.He is oblivious to the fact that he created a culture where thousands of employees committed fraud.Just yesterday, another Wells Fargo settlement announcement came out. This time, they paid $43M to settle a mortgage security scandal. If the day ends in a “y”, Wells Fargo is probably announcing another settlement.Warren Buffet has a classic quote on executives like this. “Executives who only focus on making the numbers are inevitably tempted to make up the numbers.”We avoided hiring employees from this company for a period of time but we had no idea they were committing fraud. We just saw a culture that we wanted to steer clear of.I am sure there were many great people at Wells Fargo during this time but we saw enough to realize that it just wasn’t worth the risk.The lesson here is how misguided loyalty punished those that stuck it out.You will not be rewarded for sticking it out in a toxic culture. The opposite will happen. You will be painted with a broad brush.Company culture is perishable. If yours starts to head downward, make a move before it costs you.

I worked at Wells Fargo as a retail banker during the scandal. I can only speak to how my Southern California area operated - other Wells Fargo employees have told other stories.Here is how the fraud worked in my area:Everyday, bankers were required to produce 10 “solutions”. If the solution goal was not met everyday, managers would conduct intense coaching sessions to discuss why the goal was not met. Many employees in my area would emotionally break down after several coaching sessions because of the stress and anxiety of their boss threatening their future employment. The threat of termination was constant.Solutions were things like: new debit card, new deposit accounts, new online banking setup, approved credit card, approved loan, approved line of credit.Because no solution credit was offered for denied credit applications, bankers tended to focus on the guaranteed solutions: debit products like new accounts and debit cards.Customers with a mortgage account and no other business were particularly targeted by retail bankers. Because Wells Fargo waived the checking account monthly maintenance fee for customers with mortgage balances, retail bank employees could open new checking accounts for those customers - and they wouldn’t know until their mortgage was paid off or refinanced to another institution.Every January, management conducted “Jump into January”. This was a name for the expectation of double sales in the month of January. Instead of 10 solutions per day, bankers were expected to deliver 20 solutions per day. Retail branches in my area met this impossible goal each year through a combination of fraudulent practices: joint and sole accounts for family members with no intent to use them, closing and re-opening accounts for existing customers, opening new deposit accounts for credit-only customers, and on and on…Managers would hand 10 paper new account applications to each employee from teller to mortgage officer during October. Each employee (including part-time tellers) was expected (under threat of coaching sessions) to return 10 new account application by the end of December. Employees at my first branch instructed me to canvass my family members for names, addresses, and, most importantly, social security numbers.After harvesting all the family member applications from branch employees, managers would then selectively dole out applications to bankers at the end of each business day. Family accounts would be opened at the end of the day to top-off a banker’s daily sales.In Southern California, bankers particularly preyed on Mexican nationals seeking to use our money remittance service. For the first two years I worked at Wells Fargo, non-customers could remit money to Mexico for a fee. Instead of simply processing the remittances, bankers would often open new accounts for these people by lying and telling them they had to open a new account.Since a new checking account, debit card, and online banking counted as only 3 solutions, bankers became desperate to hit their goals and maintain their employment. Sometimes a husband/wife joint account could get you to your goal in one visit- but these were not consistent.Finding 3 new customers each day is near impossible for most Wells Fargo bankers because: Wells Fargo branches have saturated the entire market (Wells Fargo purchased Wachovia and didn’t close any of the old Wachovia branches - leaving some areas with two Wells Fargo branches in the same parking lot), there are multiple bankers at each branch, and there simply is not as much foot traffic into bank branches because of online and mobile banking.Theres more, but I hope that sheds some light on it.