Wells Fargo to lay off more than 100 North Carolina employees

One of North Carolina’s largest employers, Wells Fargo, plans to lay off more than 100 people in Wake County.

Employees were told on Feb. 3, and the layoffs will go into effect on April 4, impacting 112 people at the company’s corporate office in Raleigh. 

“These business decisions are never easy,” the Wells Fargo Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter stated. 

“We are very thoughtful and deliberate in our approach, understanding the impact these decisions have on individuals at the company,” the letter, sent to state regulators, said. 

Under federal law, a company planning on location closures or mass layoffs are required to file a WARN notice with the state and provide 60-days notice to employees. 

Wells Fargo also stated in its letter that employees impacted by the layoffs will be offered severance benefits based on their years of service, and will be able to continue using the company health care plan for an unspecified period of time. 

“Wells Fargo is committed to supporting our displaced employees and provides severance, career assistance, and other services to assist them,” the WARN letter said. 

“We will make every effort to minimize the impact and ease the transition for our affected employees,” the letter stated.

Of the employees being cut, 106 are from the Chief Operating Office unit, with many specializing in loan servicing.  

Last August, the company laid off 194 employees in Winston-Salem.   

Wells Fargo is the fourth largest bank in the country and employs more than 36,500 people across North Carolina. 

North Carolina isn’t the only state being impacted by the company’s restructuring. Wells Fargo in West Des Moines, Iowa, will be losing 49 employees this spring as well. 

The future of AI and employment at Wells Fargo

In December, Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf, discussed the rollout of AI usage in the company and how this impacts employees at the Goldman Sachs Conference. 

“We’re not as efficient as we should be without the benefits of AI,” Scharf said. 

With the current rollout of AI in the engineering side of Wells Fargo, Scharf stated that code-writing efficiency has increased by 30%-35%, without the reduction of employees. 

Scharf did make it clear that AI will not “totally replace humans,” though he expressed that it will create an opportunity to do things differently going forward. 

While the headcount of employees at Wells Fargo may not be immediately dropping due to AI, it’s a looming reality for the future of the company. 

“No one wants to stand up and say we should have, we’re going to have a lower headcount in the future, it’s a hard thing to say,” Scharf said.

Since Scharf joined the company in 2019, the number of employees has been reduced from 275,000 to 210,000.

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