I have worked for or with many financial institutions nationwide. Never have I seen one as sleazy as BBVA Compass or as disliked by employees. There are several reasons for this.
1) Executive Management will basically tell employees what they think the employees want to hear. However, EM has no intention of carrying through with it. This will work for a period of time, then the employees become jaded.
2) They had a practice of laying people off in first part of year, just before bonuses are paid for prior year, and not paying bonus. They were sued, had to pay settlement/verdicts so changed procedure so if laid off after year end will receive bonus for prior year. Now they lay you off in middle of holidays so can get out of or reduce your bonus payment.
3) The talent of many of Executive Management is low, this becomes quite obvious to employees. Interestingly, BBVA participated in a survey. For those familiar with the brand, but had not used BBVA as a bank, they rated very high among their peers based on perception of quality. For those that banked with BBVA (experienced what they are actually like) they ranked very low among their peer banks.
4) From a ROA standpoint or an efficiency standpoint BBVA underperforms it's peer banks. To improve this you need to grow revenue or reduce expenses. They have not had the talent/culture to grow revenue, so their focus has been to reduce expenses.
Almost everyone that I know that works there would like to work somewhere else. However, pay is ok, benefits are strong and frankly it is an easy place to work. so they tolerate the aforementioned.
