Wells Fargo Should Be More Generous With Federal Workers.

Ted

FYI: Wells Fargo says it wants to make things right with the American public. After years of cheating its customers, the bank has a golden opportunity to make good on its promises.

Since the federal government shutdown began two weeks ago, credit unions that serve large populations of furloughed and unpaid workers have offered their members short-term interest-free loans, a variety of fee waivers and increased lines of credit.

But Wells Fargo is not stuffing its Twitter feed or news release list with any such offers. Instead, it’s offering up a few sentences on its website that say that the bank will “work with” affected federal employees and that some borrowers “may” qualify for forbearance.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/your-money/wells-fargo-government-shutdown-loan.html

catch22

IMHO, Wells Fargo should have already witnessed an exodus of account holders to the point of closing it's "cheating" doors. The "Hotel California" of banks.
And folks still wonder why "TRUST" is such a difficult social standard to discover.

msf

This is a company that rarely misses an opportunity to kick people when they're down. For example, not only did it fail to help people of its own volition after 2008 with their mortgages, it denied refinancing that should have been granted under the government HARP program. That resulted in hundreds of foreclosures.
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/46372-wells-fargo-reveals-software-error-wrongly-denied-much-needed-mortgage-modifications

So the fact that it couldn't recognize an opportunity for positive PR (even while costing very little) is no surprise.

Just to be fair and balanced, here's Fox Business News' take on banks that are helping out. It highlights three such banks: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank.
These banks help customers hit by partial government shutdown
https://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/these-banks-help-customers-hit-by-partial-government-shutdown

Seeing that Wells Fargo is working to improve the "customer experience", will it go nationwide with Starbucks in its branches? That's something it started in California a couple of decades ago but seemed to lose interest in. Just think - you could be drinking a $4 latte and helping out Wells Fargo at the same time.
http://articles.latimes.com/1997/oct/10/business/fi-41154

rforno

Dont' worry, Wells Fargo will just create a few thousand new phantom accounts and then offer them deep discounts or loan forgiveness.

hank

They sell mutual funds too.

I recall they took over the Strong funds after Richard Strong was forever banned from the business by the SEC in the mid 90s. Wells Fargo’s current fund lineup is easily double the number Strong offered. And I can’t find a single one whose name sounds like it’s a carry-over from Strong.

https://www.wellsfargofunds.com/ind/mutual-funds/performance.html#!facetPanel=0&calendar=Month-end&shareClass=A

rforno

All looking quite expensive and probably bearing outdated frontend loads and 12b1 fees I bet....

hank said:

They sell mutual funds too.

I recall they took over the Strong funds after Richard Strong was forever banned from the business by the SEC in the mid 90s. Wells Fargo’s current fund lineup is easily double the number Strong offered. And I can’t find a single one whose name sounds like it’s a carry-over from Strong.

https://www.wellsfargofunds.com/ind/mutual-funds/performance.html#!facetPanel=0&calendar=Month-end&shareClass=A

hank

rforno said:

All looking quite expensive and probably bearing outdated frontend loads and 12b1 fees I bet

Yep. Spot checked 3 or 4 and they all carry front loads. For a few years after the takeover they kept Strong’s symbols, bore similar names, and didn’t charge a load. Strong had some good funds and decent talent at his Milwaukee base. Too bad he wrecked it all with his greedy fingers.

Old_Joe

@Ted- Well, for sure we're on the same page on this one.

msf

WF acquired the funds in 2005 and kept the no load shares as "Investor Shares" until 2015. In 2015 the Investor class shares were merged into the A class shares. So a search by (old) ticker comes up empty. Looking at the A share inception dates, WF started adding share classes in 2000.

Here's WF's announcement showing all the investor class shares (with tickers) and what they merged into.
https://www.wellsfargofunds.com/assets/edocs/communications/20151016-productalert.pdf

I recognize several of these Strong funds, including Muni Advantage (later named Strong Ultra Short Term Muni) (SMUAX), Advantage (later named Strong Ultra Short Term Income) (STADX), Asia Pacific (SASPX), Common Stock (STCSX), Enterprise (SENTX), Opportunity (SOPFX). See which ones you spot.

All the funds named above still exist in A class form.

Virtually all funds that are sold NTF pay fees around 0.35%-0.40%. These fees come out of fund assets. Whether they're broken out into a separate 12b-1 line item, or paid for by the manager out of inflated management fees, it's still the investor ultimately paying these fees.

The line item may be antiquated, but the underlying fee you're paying is definitely not. Which is why I seek out institutional class shares, or single share-class funds that don't participate in NTF programs.

hank

I owned STADX (Strong Advantage). An Ultra-short term bond fund. (pegged at $10 per share I seem to recall). Held it outside a tax shelter. Used to write checks on it. No problems at the time, but suspect it was on weak legs knowing how he operated. Wonder how it fared under WF in ‘08?

I recognize both high yield funds STHYX and STHBX. Owned at least one of them. Enterprise sounds familiar from back than - but never owned it. Symbols starting with “ST” are a dead give away as being early Strong funds. And those starting “WF”, I suspect, were already Wells Fargo funds before the merger / takeover.

I don’t recall any target date funds from Strong. But I left them around ‘99. They might have rolled those out later, if they had them at all.