Wells Fargo: Commitment To The Hispanic And Latino Community

Today, Wells Fargo is widely recognized for its commitment to the Hispanic and Latino community. This commitment however, is not a recent phenomenon and dates back to before the turn of the century. Since its founding in 1852, Wells Fargo had encouraged team members to treat all customers with courtesy and respect. The once informal policy became company standard in 1888 when agents and managers were required to show “proper respect to all. Let them be men, women, children, rich or poor, white or black…” To put the significance of this in context, when the policy was written the nation was becoming increasingly dismissive of minorities. African Americans faced a wave of Jim Crow laws that sought to undermine their rights. Women gained new opportunities,

When Henry Wells, the co-founder of Wells Fargo, visited the Panama office in 1853 he was so impressed by the dedication of the agents there that he declared them to be “the very best men on the entire route”. Many of the agents during this time expressed great pride in the roles they served, one agent named J.C Ybarra in El Salvador said that he and his fellow team members had the “honor of being considered as employees of a company which enlarged in the commercial history of the New Worlds”. These early innovative Hispanic and Latino team members had a role in building connections and communities through the services they

Born into a family of farm laborers in Brawley, California and raised in the state’s Central Valley, Garcia knew and understood his customers in the agricultural communities where he managed Wells Fargo’s banking business. Garcia worked his way up through the corporate ladder and eventually managed the Wells Fargo banking stores in Clovis and Fresno while hosting a local Spanish-language radio show that promoted financial literacy. Throughout his 34 year career with Wells Fargo he built strong relationships with his co-workers and customers, which earned him numerous internal sales awards as a store manager; he even went on to become a founding member of the California and National Hispanic Chambers of