Wells Fargo has ended a policy that required a diverse slate of candidates in the first round of interviews for senior-level roles in the United States, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday citing a memo to staff.
The move will make the bank the latest in the financial industry to scale back its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts after criticism from U.S President Donald Trump.
Trump has directed government agency chiefs to end “illegal discrimination” at federal agencies and in the private sector. Earlier on Wednesday, he also asked Apple to scrap its DEI policies a day after the tech giant’s shareholders voted to keep them.
“DEI was a hoax that has been very bad for our country,” he posted on social media platform Truth Social.
Diversity in finance has long been a challenge, and the current business climate risks undoing some modest gains recently.
Citigroup, whose CEO Jane Fraser was the first woman to lead a major Wall Street bank, last week dropped a requirement for a diverse slate of candidates for job interviews. Bank of America also scrapped some of its DEI initiatives earlier this week.
A spokesperson for Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The bank had unveiled a number of diversity initiatives in 2020, including tying executive compensation to reaching inclusion goals.
Wells Fargo employs 217,000 people globally, of which 51% are female. In the U.S., 51% of its employees are White, 48% are racially or ethnically diverse and 1% remain undeclared, according to a filing with regulators earlier this week.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)
