The Chaser Report - Employee Rewards | Wankernomics

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

Charles Firth and his co-wanker James Schloeffel have been working on Wankernomics for a long time, and now their hard work has culminated in the Wankernomics podcast. Enjoy episode one in our feed today, and find more episodes by searching "Wankernomics" in your podcast app.---Listen AD-FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and without Charles, at least in this intro. See, the thing is, it's an awkward topic, but Charles has been cheating on the Chaser Report and cheating on me and cheating on you, dear listener, because he's seeing other podcasts. In fact, he's launched another podcast with his... is Wankonomics collaborator, James Schleffel. It is called Wankanomics, unsurprisingly, and they've just dropped the first episode. They've even recorded videos as well.

It's a very long podcast. They seem to have done, frankly, a level of work on this that listens to the Chase Report will find unfamiliar. I'm reluctantly forced to admit that it seems really good. So we're going to share it with you today. do you go and subscribe to it wherever you get your podcasts. Probably here. Here's where you get your podcast.

I don't know if you've just got to say that when we recommend a podcast. So yeah, subscribe now here. And the question for the first episode is have they devised the worst employee recognition scheme ever created? I think Charles already has that title with the Chaser Interns Program. But nevertheless, let's hear from James and Charles, the Wankers themselves, with episode one. the Wankonomics podcast. Regular Chaser Report Service, we'll resume next week. A quick warning. This podcast contains words such as circle back and operational cadence, which some listeners may find offensive.

Hello and welcome to the Wankeromics podcast with me, Charles Firth and James Schleff. Now, James, remind me, why do we do this podcast again? Great question, Charles. This podcast is about finding Wankanomics in the real world. We're looking for examples of Wankanomics in the real world. We're looking for examples of Wankanomics in the wild. And can I say we have an absolute, wonderful story today. It's a story that's got pretty much everything. It's got mission statements. It's got purpose statements. It's got puns in the purpose statements. It's got a touch of employee fraud, illegal bank accounts being set up. It's got pinning. It's got bundling. It's got everything. And it is primarily about

employee recognition schemes, which I know it sounds like a snooze fest, but I promise you it's not. This is stuff that goes to the very deepest, darkest recesses of corporate wankery. So let's get into it after this. So the whole idea for this podcast was I was actually searching back through my notes that I'd made about last year's show. Right. Just touching base. Just touching base.

And remember that we had a joke about. how one of the audience participants had done such a great job as our employee that we'd given her a five-pound Tesco voucher. Yes. Yes. Joan, I think we called her. Joan from operations. Operations or something, yes.

Because just to provide some context, this show, Just Suching a Base, is basically an all-staff meeting where the audience is the staff. And Joan was awarded a five-pound Tesco voucher for her work on putting together a PowerPoint. Yeah, she'd put together a PowerPoint and included 14,000 words on one. flight and read out every single one. And that was worth rewarding. And obviously at some point in the writing of that, I had gone out in search and thought, is there a better voucher than a five pounds Tisco voucher?

Obviously in Australia, we were calling it a $5. It was a Coles voucher? You know, pizza party. What could it be? And I stumbled across at the time this tweet that had gone viral from September 2025 by Sarah Osmond, my employer emailed me to congratulate me on my four-year anniversary with a link to a button that said view recognition, which takes you to a page that says, you are recognized, right? No.

Yes. So four years into the job, click a button. Oh, wow. I mean, that's amazing. I mean, nothing says, you know, we value like an automatic. generated electronic message from a computer. I'm sure it's supercharged with sort of sincerity TM. So what was the exact phrase?

You are valued. You are recognized. You are recognized. So hang on. Hang on. Can we just, let's just deep dive on that a little bit. Because it's a little bit sinister, isn't it?

You are recognized. You know I love grammar, passive voice. Like, who is doing the recognizing here? Well, no, exactly. We don't know. No, this is right. No, so this is the whole thing, James. This is the brilliant thing.

So online, there is a wide supposition that this viral tweet that has since gone everywhere, right, is actually not true. Right. Like it's a fictional account. And because somebody repost it with a photo of, you know, a screenshot from Severance. Right. And it is. It's a sort of dystopic. It's a satirical idea.

Yeah. Well, at least in Severance, I think they get a waffle party, don't they? So they get something. Yeah, exactly. But no, so I did a bit of research and actually turns out that Sarah was not lying, right? She works for University of Chicago, right? University of Chicago runs a recognition hub on the intranet run by Awardco. Now, Awardco is, I mean, straight out of Severance, right?

which is a company that is set up to recognize employee milestones, like to sort of be the Uber or Airbnb. Like it's a sort of dot com of employee recognition, right? So this is when companies want to outsource their recognition. Yes, exactly. Surely that's the one thing you can't outsource. Exactly, because the whole point about being recognised is to take the time to recognise it, right?

And this automates the process of recognising. But the features, I promise you, This is from their website. The features are straight out of the mind of a psychopath, right? Like, it is a genuinely psychopathic idea because it's, so it says, you know, recognition, create effortless, flexible recognition that builds culture. This is from the Award Code website, right? Effortless.

So the whole idea is because it's selling it to the employer, right? Yes. Yeah, you want to recognize your employee? Make sure you don't put any effort into it. Like, literally, that's the sales pitch. But then the best one is celebrate. So it's got all these different features. But the best one is celebrations.

Save time by automating everyday moments and milestones. So instead of having to celebrate somebody's birthday by taking the time out to celebrate it, you automate the celebration. So it's like automating empathy. It's so good. But then the other thing is they've actually trademarked this. feature. It's called Award Call Engage TM. Right. And the whole sort of idea behind this is the problem with old style recognition of employees is that you get nothing out of it as the

employer, right? Like it's all about the employee. Yes. Why don't we actually supercharge and put some self-interest behind recognition and move employee feedback to measure. measurable change, right? So the whole idea is... Sorry. Can we just have a rule on this podcast that you don't do American accents? Oh, damn, okay.

But it sounds so much more offensive. Okay, do it fine. Well, no, I could do it in the clip to British accent if you want. No, that's okay. This is very American. I think we're allowed to... I'm pretty sure this is from America. Like, I don't even have to check that.

I know this is American. It's very American coded. But I feel like you're not recognizing my American accent. I'm sorry. Maybe I should click on this button here. Can I outsource the recognition of that to this company? And maybe you'll get an email in four years' time. Okay.

So award co-engaged TM, no American X-in. We are moved from employee feedback to measurable change. So the whole idea is if you're going to recognize your employee, at least get something out of it for yourself. Of course. And it's got all these case studies of people like who go, oh, I used to just send my employees an Amazon voucher for 25. to recognize them.

I couldn't track it. And so I didn't know whether it was changing their behavior at all. Yes. Now I'm actually manipulating them whenever I want to recognize them. Yes. And actually driving change

in the interest of my company. This is great. Do you reckon we could apply this to our personal lives? Because I just find like giving compliments to people in my family or in my friendship. It's just such a bore. But what's in it for you? Nothing.

Nothing. It just takes up my time. Yes. You know, I have to think about what to say or, you know, I have to put together a text message. I mean, really, this should be outsourceable. And I think we're one step away from that. Oh, no. Like, we're here.

This is great. So what else? So what happens? So you click on a button and you get a page that says you are recognized. You're recognized. Okay, so the mistake that Sarah made was that she'd only been working at her employer for four years. Right. And so obviously they send out milestone emails or automated.

Like no one's actually recognizing anything in this process. But the mistake she made was that University of Chicago only starts actually giving you anything as part of the recognition package, award code package, at year five. Right. And what you earn when you reach five years of employment is you earn points, right? Right. Of course you do. Of course you're in points.

That's whatever I want. Yes. I've been slaving me for five years. Oh great. I've got some points. Points. Guess James. Guess where you can use those points.

Oh, I don't know. To buy pizza or something? What? No, not pizza. That would be something. You might want. The points are usable only at the University of Chicago merchandise shop to buy University of Chicago.

I go branded merchandise. Oh my goodness gracious. Okay. So you've slayed the way for five years and you have earned the opportunity to promote the company that you work for. Oh, that is brilliant. That is brilliant. Oh, okay. And how is this described to them?

Is it like, you know, congratulations after five years. You have won the opportunity to, have you got a pay rise? No, you've got no pay rise. You are now a walking billboard for our company. You now maybe have enough points to get a University of Chicago baseball cap. This is so so American. Hang on. James, I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, what if at the five-year mark, you don't get enough points for what you've always wanted in the merch shop, right? What if you just fall short? We have to work. What do you do? Well, the answer, do you think, oh, maybe wait another year, you get a few more points? No, no, no. Wait another five years.

Yeah. Because you only get the points on the five-year increment. Right. So at the five-year mark, you get some points, then wait another five years. You get another trench of points. I mean, by the 25-year mark, you're getting a hoodie. There's some tough choices to make, aren't there?

Because you might get to the five-year mark, and you might have enough, I don't know, like a water bottle or something. Yeah, exactly. You go, do I take the water bottle? Or do I put my head down, go another five years, and then get, I don't know, the totals. bag or something. Yeah, it's water bottle in the hand is worth two in the bush. Yeah, I think that's, that's what they've always said. Oh, wait, see, hang on, do Americans actually get paid?

Like, if there's anyone in America listing, I'd be fascinated to know this. Like, do you actually get money or is it more like your, your salary is like 50,000 points that you can spend on on mugs and t-shirts? Well, arguably, the way the American economy is going, US dollars are, equivalent of earning points now that it says right okay anyway so that that's the genesis of this topic area right which is i just stumbled across this thing and it got me thinking oh you know what's the best employee recognition scheme in the world like assuming that that's not it well could i just sorry just before you get yeah i go no yeah because you yeah because you told me you're working on employee recognition so i did have a i did have a bit of a look at this and i

so there's a company called steven barry apparently doesn't exist anymore It's a clothing chain in America. Again, America. And apparently they used to have a top banana award. Now, this is for their head office, right? So I think. So their top banana award. Yep.

And guess what the person who won that award got? A banana. An actual banana. Like, that's what they got. Just a banana. Just a banana. Just a normal banana. Yes.

Like an edible banana. An edible one. That goes off after three days. Yes. Yes. This is. This is one of my favorites though as well. You can't even put on the mandel piece.

Pride of place. No, no. It's gone. I love this one though, because this one, this company, I'm not sure what the company was, but it was a $100 voucher right, which sounds quite good. That's very good.

But for Tiffany, right? For Tiffany, the jewelry company. The jewelry company. Yes. Which meant, according to this person, was enough to buy one cuff link. I think that's almost worse than a banana. Do you think that Tiffany is supplying?

$100 vouchers to employers knowing that everything's worth $250 minimum. You're going to get a sale. You're going to... And maybe the company gets a kickback. They get a percentage of the extra money spent. Maybe that's what we should do.

We should offer companies, you know, a $10 wankonomics voucher or something like that knowing that our ticket prices start at $35. Yes. And so we're actually just driving sales. Well, also, I mean, we haven't got any employees at this point in time. But I think this is the opportunity to probably to put the call out for employees. If anyone's out there listing who wants to work, I don't know, 50 to 60 hours a week and maybe after five years,

get 25% off a bankonomics t-shirt, email us. Do you think that's legal? It probably is legal. No, it wouldn't be legal. Surely not legal. Because that's slavery. Yeah. I think that's like, well, yeah.

At least slaves got fed, I think. It's worse than slavery. They're a banana. Yeah, true, true. You worked in the corporate world. Did you ever come across this sort of stuff? Yeah, look, the first time I got recognition was, I was actually working for a travel company.

And so after three years, I actually got a free trip to Canada. Oh. Does that, that's about the same as getting a voucher for promotional materials, isn't it? After three years, you just get a statement saying, you are recognized. You don't get it. Sorry, that's after five years. After five years, you get there.

So maybe that's not quite the best example. You got a trip to Canada. Isn't that amazing? I know. Well, you didn't get paid much in the travel. I worked in marketing for a travel company. It's all right. It's all right.

I know it's fantastic. It's good. I'm not complaining. But there was another company I worked for. And I, this is quite funny because I think it must have been someone in the HR department came up with this idea where they were going to put everyone. one's work anniversary, you know, like the day which was your anniversary of when you started at the company, put everyone's work anniversary into everyone's calendar, right? And there might

have been like 80 or 90 people who work for this company. Oh, so. And so, and so what this meant, though, if you thought, if you think it's through, so the idea was that you'd get that day and then you'd like a little pop up reminder, like a calendar reminder. Like it's almost if you had a meeting, it'd be like, you know, it's Jenny from finances work anniversary today. Yeah. But the way to set this up, they decided to put it in everyone's Outlook calendar. And so everyone arrived at work on a Monday morning with like 90 requests to accept calendar invites, right? And then I think very quickly someone obviously realized that this is a ridiculous, terrible idea.

And so by about 9.30, the whole thing was scrapped. And there were no longer, you know, they just got all deleted. Except, and I'm not sure whether there's just an accident or by design. but the CEO of the company who also was a part owner of the company his work anniversary was the only one remaining and that sat there for years so once a year you'd get this little pop-up going

it's Bob's 17 year work anniversary and it was kind of like I don't know what to do with that information like what am I supposed to do do I get on the phone to him and go oh mate like just thrilled you know seven then years Congrats.

I'm not quite, yeah. Is it an opportunity? Because if it's 90 employees, there would be some employees who are suckholes, right? Like, there would be some who do reach out to Bob and say, hey Bob. Yes. Like, maybe it was left in there as a sort of road shut. You're like a psychological test to sort of find out who the real sycophants are. Yeah.

And then promote them up the chain. Yeah. Like, did you know the other senior executives being particularly sycophantic at that organization? Well, see, you'd only know, see, there was a certain, I mean, we're going off, off piss here a little bit, but there's a certain type of person, and I'm sure people listening can understand this, who would do the, you know, CC everyone, you know, the CC all staff. And so instead of just going to Bob and going, congratulations, you'd go, you know, Bob and then CC all staff. Hey, Bob, congratulations on your 17 years. It's called performative sincerity, isn't it? Is it?

Yes, that's exactly what it is. It's a management concept. Right, yeah. A lot of that, isn't there? And also if, you know, if someone's, I don't know, got some good news or has been promoted or something, you know, instead of just maybe emailing them one-on-one, you know, you're CC in the entire company,

just to show that, you know, this is the cover person you are. And did you notice Bob Walking around with lots of company branded merch all the time? No, it wasn't that kind of company. I suspect it was a little bit awkward for Bob. Like I'm not sure that Bob was behind it. I think this was like maybe... Oh, so he couldn't delete it.

No, no. And actually, now that I remember it, I've got a feeling, I'm not sure this is true, but I've got a feeling that maybe the person who set it up left the company. And so it could never be deleted. Yeah, that was it. And so it just stayed.

in there. And once a year, yeah, it had just come up. And it was a reminder of what could have been, because it could have been every single person in the company having their little pop-up. But that never happened. Okay. So what I was thinking is what is the most noteworthy employee incentive scheme in history? And look, I looked around and there's actually, I'm going to use a broad definition of employee recognition. So there's sort of, there's two categories. there's the click on a link can get nothing employee recognitioning. And then there's also just like quotas and targets that are part and path of your job. And if you exceed them, maybe you get, you know, a bonus in your pay packet or something like that.

And like I admit that they're not exactly the same thing. But I think we should sort of bundle them all in the same. That's fine. Yeah, okay. The story that actually I ended up sort of finding, and I think might be the most noteworthy employee incentive scheme in history is the world's Fargo employee recognition scheme saga that is so notable, so famous that Harvard Law School even published a study on it, among other things.

There was a congressional report on it. The FBI looked into it at one point. There were certainly lots of inquiries and actually fines attached to this sort of thing. It ended up costing about $3 billion to the. to the company involved, Wells Fargo. So it all goes back to the early 1990s, right? And at some point, here in Australia, I know, and I'm sure it's true in the UK and the US as well,

it became very popular for banks to start cross-selling products, right? Of course. It was this guy called Richard Kovacevic, and he was at a company called Norwest, which was a big US bank in the United States. in the 1980s. By 1993, he had become CEO, and the reason he'd become CEO so quickly was he came up with the idea that the only way a bank in the US can expand is to move beyond banking. Like basically, the whole idea was there's too much competition in the retail market.

What banks need to do is actually become drivers of insurance products and investment services. and all those sorts of things. Like if we can just sort of increase the number of products that our current clients have, then we will grow, right? And it worked. It totally worked. By 1998, so this is about five years after he became CEO, Norwest was the fastest growing bank in America.

And it actually ended up buying Wells Fargo, which was a very famous bank, which wasn't growing nearly as fast as Norwest at the time. And because Wells Fargo was so famous, they actually took over the name. But he basically just through this fantastic idea of cross-selling, basically created this massive, massive company been known as Wells Fargo, right? So 15 years of cross-sealing, right?

It was the idea that the Australian banks adopted so well, right? Which is every time somebody walks in and you see that they've only got a bank account, make sure they go, you know, they'd sign up for something else, right? And at the time, like, so when he started, the average bank customer had four financial products, right? And by the time he ended, they had six. But his whole mantra right from the mid-1990s was called Going for Great, right? Like every year he would write a document about going for great. But the reason why this is such a good mantra and why this is the greatest sort of incentive scheme ever is going for great.

How do you think great is spelled? Well, I'd guess G-R-E-A-T. That's how he spelled great, isn't it? No. Oh, no, no. It was spelled G-R-8, right? And the whole idea was that he wanted every customer, they had 70 million customers,

every customer had to have eight products from that bang, right? Great. Great. Oh, shit, okay. And it was true because it was. a play on words. Like, and as you know, like any, you know, mission statement, purpose statement, value statement, if they've got a play on values, anything like that, which has a play

on words, it just immediately has more credibility. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. So, that was the whole idea. And there's this famous document that was then widely quoted. So the 2006 copies of the vision and values of Wells Fargo is definitely worth diving into, if you're ever wanting a happy read. Can I just like, because I did,

because you did mention, we're going to be talking about Wells Fargo. So I did look at their values, actually. Because you know that I love organizational values. Yes. And look, they may have changed, but I looked at their values.

I don't think I'm even going to get past the first one here. Yeah. Their first value is ethics. Right? Just like all of it. All of the ethics. They don't define, like, it's not like good ethics.

It's not like, at least companies usually kind of pretend, to come up with, I don't know, respect or integrity. Yeah, you know, they've just gone for ethics as a whole thing. Yeah, it's just the whole, all of it.

I don't think they've realized that that is not necessarily good. That's just describing a concept. It's like philosophy. Yeah, yeah. Having the value of it. Or like characteristics or something. Like it's just, it's kind of,

I mean, values are always meaningless, but that's particularly meaningless. Yeah, yeah. Ethics. Yep. And then I'll read out the other ones, customer satisfaction, leadership and personal accountability and diversity. So it's a pretty standard ones there. But ethics, my goodness.

Let me just deep dive a little bit more into this vision and values of Wells Fargo document. So first of all, I just want to clarify employees are not called employees. Of course they're not. No. What are they called? They're called valued Wells Fargo team members. Right. So team members is what we're doing about here.

Of course. And their strategy. The head of strategy, and it's to out-local the nationals and out-national the locals. What? Sorry? What? To out-local the nationals? So in terms of banking, to out-local the nationals and to out-national the local banks. Okay. Well, I mean, that's certainly a collection of words. I'm not sure it's a sentence, though, is it? I mean, I think you need a verb for it to be a sentence, don't you? What's

So out local What does that mean? Well, to feel more local Than a national bank Right, okay I'm going to out local you Yeah, I'm going to out local you You know, if you're

Say you're walking down the street Yes And you bump into somebody Yeah Who's not from your suburb Yeah, you've outlacled them You've outlocal them Yeah

Similarly, Yeah If you're with a group of locals. Yes. Yes. And you're all from somewhere else. And you, well, no, no. And you talk about national politics, for example.

Yeah, you've out. I've just been our nation's capital. Yeah. You've out national. I can't even say. You've out nationaled them. Is that the terminology? Oh, yeah.

No, maybe you're all right. Maybe it's actually, if you're with a group of locals and you're not from there. Yeah, you're out nationaling them. You're out nationaling them. But the brilliance with what Wells Faris. I go is doing is they're doing both of those things at the same time, which feels impossible. Feels impossible, but I love what they've done there. No, I think it's good because it sort of sounds so specific.

And you can just imagine on investicles, like this chief executive, we've said there. And the investors, well, they wouldn't have known what questions to ask. Well, but also. Except maybe, what does that mean? But then you'd look like an idiot. Yeah, but also it can just be used as feedback for everything. It's like, well, you haven't out local enough or you haven't out national enough. It's like, well, I'm doing one of those things, but you can't do both at the same time.

It's the perfect way to avoid accountability, isn't it? Absolutely. Every time you do something local. Local. It's too local. Well, it's too local. Yeah. Every time you do something that's national.

So, well, hang on. What about your local? Yeah. No, no. But also, if somebody criticises you, you just go, oh, well, I was just locally. I was just local. You've got a national. Yeah, you're being too national there.

in that moment. Yeah. Okay. That's good. That would have taken. How many hours do you reckon that would have taken to come up with? Probably five minutes, but. Okay.

Let me put it this way. How many thousands of dollars in consulting fees would have that would have cost? Yeah. In the mid-1990, it would have been a lot of cocaine. Yeah. A lot of lunches. They would have been pleased of that. Okay.

Well, sorry, let's move on. So we got that. So then another part of their strategy is we strive to, earn 100% of every customer's business. Okay. Right. Which is a lot of the customer's business. Because I imagine a customer like...

Well, it depends how to find business. Like all of it. Yeah, like all of it. Okay. You go down to the shop and spice and milk. They want that business. We've got that. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like that's unachievable. Yeah. I do feel like companies get confused with percentages sometimes. Yeah. Because on the other side of that, There's a company in Australia. It's a freight company.

I can't remember what it's called. But they drive around with trucks. And their slogan is we're committed to delivering 100%. And it's like, well, for a freight company, I would have thought that's kind of entry level stuff. Like if you're delivering 80% of my package, then you haven't done your job. So if that's your kind of, that's your high watermark is we're going to deliver 100%. Then that's a very low bar.

It's a very, yeah. But it sounds impressive, doesn't it? It sounds very impressive. It's committed to delivering 100%. Well, I suppose it puts it in contradiction to say the postal service, which has never delivered 100%. Zero percent. They just leave it at the depot.

Yeah. But this is slightly different because they are looking for 100% of your business. Yeah, which I feel like. As a KPI, that feels very difficult to achieve. I know. No wonder it ended in disaster and scandal because, you know, Everyone must have been so stressed. I mean, that would make me very stressed.

Yes. It's just sort of go, we've got to do everything for this person. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so cross-selling is what we call, this is quoting from the document, cross-selling or what we call needs-based selling is our most important strategy. Now, let's just remember that this is called needs-based selling, right?

So the whole idea is, and it actually sounds reasonable, right? Like if somebody rocks up and they don't have enough money, offer them a product that can give them more money. Like you can talk about the ethics of loan sharking through pushing onto them dead or whatever. Well, ethics is one of their values. They probably would. Yeah. And then it goes on.

So this needs based selling, which is supposedly based on the customer's needs, right, is all about getting to eight products for everyone. The whole idea is that everyone needs at least eight products from them. Great, isn't it? Great, yeah. Great, not eight. Gura eight.

And so I'll just quote from that. We're over five, shooting for six, going for Gura eight. Oh, sorry. Sorry. 2026 gets a lot of, like, where we are right now, there's a lot of criticism about AI slop. But we forget that there was a time. when human beings were able to come up with just ridiculous.

Well, this is what the AI slob is trained on. This is pure AI slob. This is the original source. Oh, that's awful. So it continues, we have the highest cross-sell levels in our industry. It now takes two hands to count our cross-sell ratio. What? Sorry, did Donald Trump write this?

It now takes two hands to count our cross-sell. Because it's over five. Yeah, I get that. Jesus, I get that. Yes. But did that, my point is, did they need to say, like, I understand how counting works. I don't, like, yeah, okay, sorry. Yeah, I know, exactly.

In retail banking, our cross-sell ratio is over five products per household, almost six for customers who's been with us for three years or more. This is about double the industry average ride, which is pretty good run. So, as I mentioned before, Wells Fargo had 70 million customers. the average number of products went from four to six by 2013. So that means that by all estimations, 140 million more products were created and sold by Wells Fargo than if they hadn't done this strategy. Because all the other banks, they're flat-footed,

and the rest of the industry sort of remained that are four products per losers. It loses, exactly. Absolutely. Our formula for greatness, the document goes on, Starts and ends. This greatness has greatness spelled. Unfortunately, it's only, it's just spelled normally.

What a missed opportunity. What a missed opportunity. Our formula for greatness starts and ends with people. Mind share plus heart share equals market share. Oh. That's pretty good, isn't it? That's, yeah. I mean, that's actually good.

Yeah. Well, I love a company that starts and ends with people. I do struggle to think of anything. company that doesn't start an end with people but it's always reassuring to know that the person that's buying your product is a human being and not I don't know a cow or something because that would be a bad business model okay so now let's get into the unraveling oh as an unwrable I thought this unraveled a long time ago so the tiny tiny tiny problem with this whole idea was how the hell do you get people to sort of go from four to

six products. Like, there must be a reason why people are stuck up four products. What's going on that makes everyone at Wells Fargo go, oh wow,

I want six different financial products from them. And the answer is the going for Gutra 8 scheme came with quotas on all their employees, I mean,

team members, right? Ambitious quotas placed intense pressure on bank managers and individual bankers to produce sales against extreme

extremely aggressive and in some cases mathematically impossible quotas. So the LA Times actually at the time did a report. I think it was like in 2011. It was quite early on in the scandal where they worked out that the quotas on some of the smaller regional branches of Wells Fargo that the bank tellers had to sell each day were actually greater than the number of people who passed the bank. each day. Right.

It's mathematically impossible in that even if they'd managed to sort of go, hey, hey, person passing my bank, do you want a product? And 100% of them had said, yes, that sounds like a great idea, a crazy person. They still wouldn't have met the quotas. They still wouldn't have met the quotas, right? And people were getting really stressed by these quotas. So people were drinking hand sanitizer.

People were becoming incredibly sick. People weren't sleeping. These are all the team members. Frequent crying in the office. Levels of stress that led to vomiting and severe panic attacks. And then so, Wells Fargo had a thing called the ethics hotline. This is honestly true. It was an internal phone number that employees could call to talk through issues

and to sort of report behavior that they, felt. Okay. Ethics hotline. It just, yeah. Yep. There's something that doesn't ring quite sure about that, is there? So, starting in 2005, the first person who started the whole unraveling was this employee

noticed that customer came in and said, look, I've got this checking account and a savings account that I never set up. And the employee looked into it. And the accounts were just set up with fake driver's license number. the driver's license number was 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0. Oh, that's your computer password. Yeah. Yeah.

It's coincidence. Oh, well, I'll just have to check. I've written it down somewhere. Oh, yeah, no, it is. You're right. How did you know? How did you remember? And the date of issuance for all these accounts was 1st of January 2000.

So it was sort of really... What a coincidence. Anyway, so this guy called the ethics line. They talked through on the ethics hotline. Hang on, is this a customer or an employee? No, no. So the employee noted that, oh, wow. So he hadn't set up these accounts?

Hadn't set up these accounts. But the customer complained. He looked at it and went, oh, fuck, I'd better ring the ethics. Hotline, because something dodgy is going on here. The ethics hotline took his complaint, chatted it through, and then sacked the employee. Oh, my God. Like we said, like ethics could go both ways, right? No one said that these were good ethics.

Yeah. It wasn't until 2016 that the chief executive of Wells Fargo, who at that point was another person called Timothy Sloan, during a town hall meeting, admitted that there were some instances where reports of employee by behavior to the ethics hotline were handled, quote, inappropriately. Right. That's one way of footing it. But actually, what it turned out is that this ethics hotline over the course of the next sort of, decade was used as a way for Wells Fargo to essentially root out all the whistleblowers by sacking them or having retribution against them like using the tip-offs as a way to sort of really, oh my God, this is terrible.

From about 2005 onwards, certainly by 2006, they were sort of struggling to go to great, you know, the eight number. And so most branches ended up starting to have a daily conference call with all the managers. And every employee was supposed to, in that conference call in the morning, state, like actually, you know, like literally tell the conference call how many sales they were going to make that day. They had a sales goal each day. And then in the middle afternoon, if you hadn't made that sales goal, you would be called. up and had to explain why you didn't make your skull of sales goal for that day. I'm getting stressed just listening to this, Charles.

This sounds incredibly stressful. And this is all about banking. Oh, my God. Okay. So by 2011, the LA Times had started writing reports on this. There was just hints of a scandal going on. The Wall Street Journal published a report on it. And so they got rid of the CEO.

and brought in a new CEO, John Stumpf. Stumpf. Stumpf. Right. Okay. And he went, oh wow, this last guy got sacked for, you know, supercharging it. Maybe the solution is to supercharge it much, much more. More.

More. He doubled down. Right, yeah. And at the time, he said, to succeed at cross-selling, you have to do a thousand things right. it requires long-term persistence, significant investment in systems and training, proper team member incentives and recognition. So this is where it really goes to great.

This is where they put the pumps on, they go, okay, let's... Everyone's getting a bank account. Everyone's getting six bank account. Whether you want it or not. Yes, basically, yes, exactly. Everyone's getting an insurance account. Yes. Everyone's getting a credit card.

Everyone's getting it, right? Yeah. And so from basically then until, 2016, that is exactly what happened. They put pressure on these employees to the point where they were crying and drinking hand sanitizer. And so what the employees did, and they had these KPIs, and they also had incentives attached to those KPIs, right, like we're, you know, to make extra money.

And they went full tilted it, right? And before I reveal how they exactly went full tilted it, I just want to say that by 2013 John Stumpf So this is two years into his tenure So Stumpf Stumpf Stum P-F

Was that like a name from like an evil Character Random generator Name generator Doesn't sound real Yeah you're right Isn't it Stumpf anyway

Sorry I interrupted So what did you do He was named Banker of the Year Carrie Tolstead Who ran the retail Division was in charge of, was named the most powerful woman in banking. And Wells Fargo was named the seventh on the 2015 list of the most respected companies. So they went for greatness and they kind of achieved it.

They did it. I mean, and this is how they achieved it. This is how they achieved it. What they did is the employees just started setting up accounts for everyone. Like just did it. I mean, you don't even need people, do you? You don't even need customers. You just sit down and you set up bank accounts.

And so what happened, and this is from the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance report on it. What happened was the employees came up with jargon to describe and normalize what they were doing. So if you're doing something every day and it's unethical, you don't go, oh, I'm going to unethically set up a fraudulent account in somebody else's name. All you do is you go, oh, I'm doing some pinning today. Pinning. Pinning, right? Which is assigning pin numbers to customers' ATM cards without authorization to enroll

them in online banking, right? That was one of the... Pinning. Pinning. Okay. Yeah. Bundling was another thing, which was incorrectly informing customers that they had to sign up for multiple products in order to get the one product that they want.

Right. So you want a bank account and it's like, sorry, sir, you're going to need... Yeah. To have an insurance account and a credit card as well. That's just the law. Yes. Like that's, you have to do that. And I look back and I go, that actually happened to me.

Like in an Australian bank in 2007, I walked in there, we got a mortgage. And they said to us, you have to have a credit card with this mortgage. And I now look back and go, that's bundling. That's bundling. That's bundling. Yeah. I wonder if you were pinned as well. I probably was pinned.

I'm sure I was pinned. Yeah. But I think it's fascinating that in order to sort of cycle. psychologically cope with what they were doing. It's clearly illegal behavior. You just come up with... You come up with jargon. I know you do, don't you?

Yeah, and it just makes you feel better. It makes you feel okay. Yes. You go home and tell your partner, you know, what did you do today? I just did some pinning and bundling. I mean, that sounds super weird, but it doesn't sound illegal. It sounds divorce. Yeah.

Yeah, but not necessarily illegal. So I can see why people do it. And so guess what the pin number was? that oh there was one pin number there was one pin number that they used oh zero zero zero zero oh did you know oh was it yes oh wow it happens to be my pin number i thought that was such a coincidence yeah oh oh that's it's extraordinary okay so anyway so how many of these so fast forward one million five hundred and thirty four thousand two hundred and eighty unauthorized deposit accounts were created five hundred and sixty five thousand four hundred and thirty three credit card accounts

were created, just completely fraudulently. The total number of fraudulent accounts, presumably including sort of checking accounts and savings accounts, was estimated in May 2017 during an actual inquiry as three and a half million accounts in total. Okay. Which, that's a lot. That's a lot.

That's a lot of accounts. A lot of illegality, right? And then also, there were, this is a lot. great detail. This is sort of off to the side, but there was a whole lot of insurance products that were then set up by other insurance firms, which were Prudential and Assurance, right, and three whistleblowers from Prudential actually brought that fraud to light separately to Wells Fargo, right? Guess what happened to those three whistleblowers? Did they leave their job shells? Yeah, they were sacked. They were sacked, yes. How did you know?

It's just a hunch. Yeah. Isn't amazing. If you're not into pinning and bundling, then how can you expect to have a job? But this is also like, this is after the scandal, like the scandal had already broken.

These whistle, but you'd think it would be safe at that point. This is December 2016. Yeah. It was still, it was already front page news. Congress was doing an inquiry. You know,

Congress had already fined them $185 million in September. These insurers come forward feeling, pretty safe, I would have thought, oh, by the way, these Wells Fargo people were doing it to us as well. Sacked. Sacked. Out of here. Brutual. And then the other really depressing thing is one of the comments that was found during

this inquiry, one employee was told, look, maybe if you unbuttoned that top button, you'll get more accounts. Now it would be a great time to let it out. So it was a really, it was a great culture. It was a very classy culture. Okay. Yeah. Oh, so James, we've already touched on the consequences,

but what do you reckon the consequences are going to be for Wells Fargo? Well, I would have thought, I mean, you'd shut a company like that down, wouldn't you? I mean, it's basically a criminal operation. I mean, surely it's no longer exists, does it? I mean, I'm not that familiar with the American banking system, but surely Wells Fargo doesn't exist anymore. No, so it does exist, but there were consequences. Okay.

Maybe slightly less than shutting it down. Yeah. The company during the peak period from when John, what was his name, John Stumpth, I think it was. Took over from 2011 to 2016, the main sort of time of egregious behaviour. The bank turned $104 billion in profit during that period. Okay. In profit. How much in total, so there was a fine of $185 million.

$185 million. That's about point. Yeah. Yeah, 0.185%. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, that's right. Right.

Very well. That's small. Yes. Surely more than that. Yeah. Well, then there was also, they had to make good on all the people who had fraudulent. Like, there was a lawsuit. Right.

Because it was America. Yeah. They ended up paying out $3 billion. $3 billion. In total, including the fine. So about 3% of the profit they made. Yeah. It was definitely worth.

It was definitely worth doing. There was a 3% cost. Yes. For becoming one of the biggest banks in America. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? I'm thinking. Should we start up a wankanomics bank? I think we should definitely.

Bankanomics. And you know what? Instead of go for grade, it could be go for grind. It's terrible. That's awful. But I like it. Go for divine? Go for nine?

Go for divanine? No, it doesn't work. I like the idea of making... What about go for Grateen? Great, go for Gratee. Yes, go for Grady. No, go for Grady. Great 100.

800 products per person is a lot. But let's not set the bar too low. No, exactly, because it doesn't matter if you're pinning and bundling. Pending and bundling. I mean... That's all you need to do. And now with, you know, AI, I'm sure you could get a robot to do that for you. He's set up 800 million accounts for us.

And it wouldn't be as easy to find it. out because you could make the AI make it not just zero zero zero yeah everyone could make it it all untraceable that it would be born on different dates it would look really convincing this is brilliant i i think we should do it i'd love to make a hundred billion dollars yeah and then be charged three billion dollars for that but i feel like there's another consequence because right well's fago suffered you know a reputational damage yeah which i think we can't really count right can we? Because, you know, like, it's a vibe.

Yeah. Like, you know, I kind of feel like, you know, sure they've got an ethics hotline, but that ethics hotline was used to sack whistleblowers and then to do retribution. There was a sort of brand damage there that I think that they did need to address. Okay. So, you know, I'm just Googling this now.

Yeah. They did have to do, yes, they had to do it. Yeah. They had to change the typeface on their logo. Yes, exactly. That's... I know. Wow.

Yes. They literally did. I'm just looking at this now. They changed... Well, the typeface not so much. The colour, though. It went from gold to white. To white.

Yes. Which would have cost them a lot of money. Oh, that would have been millions. So, and also, that would have, I mean, the number of meetings they would have had to do to go through that. But also, imagine trying to print a white logo on paper. That would be very hard. a red background. I was got a red background.

I was got a red back. Yeah. Okay. Well, now the consequences are starting to get heavy because when you have to change the typeface in your logo, all of a sudden we're in different territory then. And look, I think, you know, if you were to ask customers who were defrauded, what's the one thing that they wanted out of this? Yes. I think what they'd say is, geez, I'd love to see the typeface turned from gold to white.

Yes. On the Wells Fargo logo because, you know, I've lost money from fees. You know, my credit cards maxed out. I can't, you know, my credit ratings fucked now because I've been to set up bank accounts. Yes. But at least, at least I can tell you that Wells Fargo's logo looks a bit fresher. Slightly different. Yeah.

Yeah. It looks a bit, you know, modern, more modern. So there were consequences. So what we're saying is, you know, overall, there were consequences. Yeah. Well, I'm just, actually, I'm just reading a quote here from the CMO. One of the things we heard really clearly from our customers and stakeholders was that, We want to know what you're going to do for us.

And I think they answered that loud and clear. Yeah. Yeah. They changed the logo. They changed the logo. And the campaign, which included the rebrand, which, I mean, that profound change in the logo, was called, this is Wells Fargo. Right.

Right. Which I sure that wasn't the file name for the document? It's very literal. Well, it's a bit like ethics, isn't it? It's like, it's not saying it's true. good or bad. It's not saying it behaves well or badly. It's factually true.

We've been caught out lying before. We can't get caught out lying here because this is Wells Fargo. I love it. James, so there you go. There's a story of the most famous and noteworthy, you know, incentive. I admit it's sort of like also a story about egregious banking sort of thing. But it's what happens when you sort of create the wrong incentives. Because actually the reason why sort of, you sort of,

of linked it to this thing is the Harvard Law School report on it actually says actually the incentive schemes worked perfectly. They actually did exactly what they were designed to do, which was to try and get the number of products hub. It just incentivised enormous fraud in the process. Like actually the team members did what they were expected to do, which is just get the numbers up regardless of the ethics. I love that.

And I wonder what the rewards were for, because we haven't discussed this. Oh, yes, yes. What the rewards were for the people who are meeting these targets. Was it some voucher points? Yes, to buy some Wells Fargo. And was it with the new logo or the old logo? Because wouldn't you feel ripped off? You did six years of hard work, pending and bundling.

You've got a 30% voucher to buy a Wells Fargo t-shirt. And a cap and you get the cap. Yeah. And then they rebrand on you. You've got to work another five years. We're part of the Iconiclass Network. Catch you next week.