more than two dozen current and former composite wholesale mortgage (UWM) employees say the wholesale lender has fostered a toxic work environment with allegations of racial disparities, sexual harassment, drug use and intimidation by managers. Bloomberg on Wednesday.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!None of the workers interviewed said CEO Matt Ishbia used racial slurs or sexually harassed employees, but former employees told the outlet that UWM managers openly berated subordinates and made sexually suggestive comments. Other workers described frequent drug use by sales staff, managers and executives at the outlet as well as a pressure-cooker environment designed to push workers out.
UWM chief marketing officer Sarah DeSantis said Bloomberg’s portrayal of a hostile workplace was “false and misleading”. UWM granted Bloomberg on-the-record interviews with company team members and executives, detailed answers to dozens of questions and a personal tour of its 1 million-square-foot campus, saying it would be fully transparent with Bloomberg. Is.
UWM, DeCiantis said, “has operated for nearly 40 years and employs close to 20,000 team members, and with all those great people there is nothing to suggest that this story is being told by disgruntled individuals or Nothing more than pushing a competitor. A false story for the media.
The report comes two months after Ishbia bought a majority stake in the Phoenix Suns from Robert Sarver, who himself was forced to sell the team. National Basketball Association Sarwar was found to have engaged in racist and sexist behaviour. The deal closed in February and valued the franchise at $4 billion.
Among those who claimed to have witnessed cocaine use while working at UWM was Matt Hutchinson, who left the company in June 2021 after nearly three years there. Hutchinson told Bloomberg that his manager invited him to deliver a cocaine bump at a client event in front of a mortgage broker who worked with the company.
More than half a dozen sales staff claimed to have seen drugs on campus, which the UWM denied. Police records obtained by Bloomberg show UWM security called local police twice during a five-week period in the fall of 2021 to report cocaine found at work.
UWM lawyers told Bloomberg they found no evidence of drug use complaints and said the company does not tolerate “the use of cocaine or any drug.” Similarly, the company does not tolerate race-based discrimination or sexual harassment, the lawyers wrote.
Taryn Dover, a 35-year-old former underwriter and team leader who left in November after being demoted, alleged that co-workers and managers often discussed sex in the workplace. She told Bloomberg that one manager asked to bring employees home with him to have sex.
Dover is one of five black employees interviewed by Bloomberg who said managers held black employees to a different standard than white colleagues. Management often cited her attitude, she said. Dover said, “I can’t count on both hands how many times my attitude came up.” “I was always ‘coached’ to make sure I wasn’t aggressive.”
Company attorneys said they found no evidence of racial discrimination against Dover.
Two other black employees who complained about working conditions were threatened with dismissal, and one of them was fired, Bloomberg reported. national labor relations board In 2021. The NLRB found sufficient merit to pursue the case, but the UWM settled the case and awarded back pay to the fired employee. UWM lawyers said the firing was for poor performance and a “worsening negative attitude” and had nothing to do with race.
Others complained about alleged cocaine-fuelled parties at officers’ homes and locations around the Detroit area, according to Bloomberg. Lawyers for the wholesaler said the company had no role in private gatherings and could not speak on the off-duty conduct of its employees, but that such events were not “consistent” with the UWM’s values and culture.
Bloomberg reported that some employees were upset by sales staff and managers making comments about the attractiveness of new hires, whose photos were included in in-house emails. Others complained about being mandated to send videos to pimps, which sometimes led to unwanted conversations and comments about their looks. UWM’s attorneys told Bloomberg that it found no record of complaints on either count.
In one case, Bloomberg reported, a longtime executive publicly reprimanded a subordinate repeatedly. The same executive, who has worked at UWM for more than 20 years, reportedly told a saleswoman in her 50s last year that strong women come across as “bitches,” and asked the employee to stop her. The executive denied threatening anyone and that the company does not tolerate physical intimidation or threats, UWM lawyers said, citing sources told Bloomberg.
Some former employees told Bloomberg they left UWM because managers set extremely difficult daily goals, a practice known internally as the “running play”. He said the practice seems designed to make employees unhappy and leave. The UWM denied that it had set targets that workers could not hit.
On the heels of a rising rate environment, UWM’s workforce is slated to drop from 9,000 in June 2021 to about 6,000 at the end of 2022, according to a company filing. Ishbia promises its rival will never have layoffs rocket hostage The layoffs were announced in April. A UWM spokesperson attributed the drop in staff to a return to office policy in mid-2021.
The Pontiac, Michigan-based company has become a major player in mortgage lending. In the third quarter of 2022, it will overtake arch-rival Rocket Mortgage as the largest mortgage originator in the US.
The company, founded by Ishbia’s father, has used hardball tactics and cut-rate pricing to drive volumes at the expense of margins. In the fourth quarter, UWM’s GAAP loss was $62.5 million. On the fourth-quarter earnings call, executives said UWM expects margin improvement in the first quarter amid various new initiatives.
Those initiatives include “Control Your Price,” which gives brokers 125 basis points to play with to reduce pricing for clients; a new build-to-permanent loan program; and a traditional 1% down mortgage program, in which UWM will gift borrowers up to $4,000 on conventional loans.
In the most recent quarter, UWM originated $25.1 billion in mortgage loans, compared to Rocket’s $19 billion. Most mortgage analysts expect UWM to outperform the Rockets again in the first quarter.
