Wells Fargo accused of faking effort to promote diversity

Joe Bruno, a former executive in the wealth management division of Wells Fargo, had long been troubled by the way his unit handled certain job interviews.

For many open positions, employees would interview a “diverse” candidate — the bank's term for a woman or person of color — in keeping with the bank's yearslong informal policy. But Bruno noticed that often, the so-called diverse candidate would be interviewed for a job that had already been promised to someone else.

He complained to his bosses. They dismissed his claims. In August, Bruno, 58, was fired. In an interview, he said Wells Fargo retaliated against him for telling his superiors that the “fake interviews” were “inappropriate, morally wrong, ethically wrong.”

Wells Fargo said Bruno was dismissed for retaliating against a fellow employee.

Bruno is one of seven current and former Wells Fargo employees who said they were instructed by their direct bosses or human resources managers in the bank's wealth management unit to interview “diverse” candidates — even though the decision had already been made to give the job to another candidate. Five others said they were aware of the practice, or helped to arrange it.

The interviews, they said, seemed to be more about helping Wells Fargo record its diversity efforts on paper — partly in anticipation of possible regulatory audits — rather than hiring more women or people of color. All but three spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were afraid of losing their jobs at Wells Fargo or their new employers.

In an emailed statement, Raschelle Burton, a Wells Fargo spokesperson, said the bank expected all employees to follow its hiring policies and guidelines, which are communicated across the firm. “To the extent that individual employees are engaging in the behavior as described by The New York Times, we do not tolerate it,” Burton said.

Burton said she was aware that informal directives about hiring diverse candidates had long circulated inside the bank. But those rules were from an earlier era that the bank's current leaders had nothing to do with, she added.

Most of Wells Fargo's top management turned over in 2020 after a scandal involving the creation of fraudulent accounts damaged the bank's reputation and led to more than $4.5 billion in fines.

The internal confusion around Wells Fargo's diversity policies highlights how even the noblest goals can end up getting warped as they make their way from idea to practice, ultimately hurting the very people they were meant to help.

Two years ago, in light of the national reckoning on race that followed the murder of George Floyd, Wells Fargo was among the companies that pledged to increase diversity.

In a June 2020 memo to employees, Charles W. Scharf, who became CEO of Wells Fargo the year before, pledged to consider a wider array of candidates for jobs at the bank but added that the bank struggled to find qualified Black candidates. He later apologized for the comment when the memo became public in September.