The company has been experimenting with ways to recruit more women and minorities, including a program to hire professionals who had left banking. But CEO Charlie Scharf’s reference to “a very limited pool of Black talent” for important jobs may make it harder for Wells to meet inclusion goals.
Under fire for saying that the potential pool of talent is "limited," CEO Charlie Scharf issued a memo to employees Wednesday acknowledging that his words reflected his own "unconscious bias" and vowing to improve diversity in the bank's leadership.
Some 3,400 additional staffers in the treasury management group will be required to get pre-clearance before making trades. The policy change was driven in part by increased regulatory scrutiny, the bank said.
The energy sector, retail and hospitality are among the industries that are faring poorly during the pandemic. The bank expects loan losses to remain elevated well into 2021.
Megabanks like JPMorgan Chase boosted loan-loss provisions to record levels in the second quarter in preparation for what could be a wave of loan defaults.
The firm set aside a record $9.5 billion for credit losses, about $4 billion more than analysts had expected, as it braces for a wave of coronavirus-related defaults.
Even after the Fed eased some limitations in April to promote emergency lending, the bank has had to make some “tough choices” to heed the $1.95 trillion growth ceiling set by regulators in the aftermath of its phony-accounts scandal.
