A Report On Suntrust Bank

In December of 2013, target corporation faced a serious security breach where over 40 million credit cards were stolen from different target stores. This paper is going to explore the problem, the background information about the problem, the controls that could have been in place to prevent the issue, the intended plan of control and the associated risks involved.

First South Credit Union is the business that I chose to perform a risk identification analysis on. First South Financial Credit Union serves the entire Mid South community. In order to be eligible for membership you must live, work, worship or attend school in any of the following areas, Memphis Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), Dyer County, Madison County, and North Nashville. First South Financial was founded in 1957. It was originally established to serve the personnel on the Naval base in Millington, they have grown into one of the strongest and safest financial institutions in the entire nation, according to all independent rating agencies. They have locations throughout the Mid South along with a full suite of electronic products

In January 2007, TJX Companies Inc. released a statement to the press that an estimated 40 million of their customer’s credit card accounts had been compromised (although final reports state that over 94 million accounts were affected) (Berg 2008). Through the company’s POS (Point of Sales) system, credit card information was stolen by a ring of hackers and approximately $4.5 billion spent on these cards (Berg 2008). What the hackers did was intercepted the credit card information from customers who swiped their cards at the store and then created their own physical cards using this information. Then they sold the credit cards to people, who turned around and used these cards at retail stores, like Walmart (Agrawal 2011). Three areas of weakness within the company’s IT systems that allowed for an attack of this scale were: inadequate wireless security, improper storage of customer data and failure to encrypt customer account data (Berg 2008).

When trying to determine which promotional strategy a company should use many factors need to be taken into consideration. The company must to decide who their target market is and what message they wish to deliver to the target market. Once this has been decided, the company should research their target market in order to determine which promotional strategy will work best to reach their target audience.

Wells Fargo is a public trading company that was formed in the year 1852 by Henry Wells and William Fargo. The company transcended from a service that transported from a fright from the East Coast to mining camps throughout California during the California Gold Rush old rush in the 1800s (APA, Wells Fargo). At Wells Fargo’s inception it focused on offering banking solutions to the people of California with an established mission and principles that has enshrined in its culture and values that are geared towards the company vision that states “we want to satisfy our customers financial needs and help them succeed financially.” (APA – Wells Fargo VV)

Our paper today will be on Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is an American bank that was created in 1852 by Henry Wells and James Fargo. It is the second largest bank in the USA in terms of market cap, operates in over 42 countries around the world, and has over 260,000 employees.

Upon first glance at the Wells Fargo State Bank you don't think much of it. The cylinder shaped building, with crisp white walls and lined paneled windows gave a distinct modern feel. The brown stained glass not allowing viewers to see inside of the building just added on to a more mysterious and independent feel that the entire building seemed to project. Near the entrance you will notice a circular stone bench, in the center of that is a tree. It was as if it were trying to lure people in with the simple yet pleasing design. However, once you enter the building you will notice a drastic change in the environment surrounding you. The air is still and empty. You realize it wasn't the stained glass that was keeping you from seeing in but

Wells Fargo is known to be a very strong financial lending company. Their strengths is the high cash volume of over $500 billion in assets as well as being a powerful distribution in the banking industry. Another strength is that they have relationships to serval different industries such as real estate, technology, media, financial services, retail, and many others. Since the 1800’s they have main their roots into the mind of individuals of being a strong and trustworthy company. Wells Fargo is a well-known name and so is their marketing strategy. The company is fundamentally base on hardworking and smart employees from all over types of diverse lifestyles. Being considered America largest bank ranking at number twelve in the most admired companies worldwide. A strategy that I believe Wells Fargo should take maximum advantage of its strength will be there market strategy. Wells Fargo is well recognize for their marketing strategy in the banking industry, so by marketing well their services is a way of building strategy like a bridge. It help deliver these services nationwide and reach the company goals by using various means available. Overall Wells Fargo strengths is the reason why they are top competitors. Now like any other company Wells Fargo has their weaknesses, these weaknesses include confusion or large scale activity. Being such a large company it is hard to personally know all individuals within the community. By being so large they become targets of fraud and

In the article, Bank of America ordered to pay $2.2 million to 1,000 black job seekers it discriminated against written by David Knowles there was a major issue regarding racism. This written piece discussed the court case against Bank of America and how this corporation was ordered to $2,181,593 in back wages and interest to 1,147 African Americans that were denied jobs. This bank’s office branch in Charlotte, NC had discriminated against blacks in 1993 and again between the years of 2002 and 2005. This case was first introduced in 1997 and settlements were not concluded until late 2013.

The management at wells Fargo relied on compliance as a strategy for managing its ethics (YouTube, 2018). The management set standards that employees were expected to meet. For instance one employee reports that in the line of work she realized that she was unable to meet the set goal. She decided to call the banks ethics hotline to explain to the management that there was no ethical way of making such huge sales (Cowley, 2018). The management at Wells Fargo was using the low-level employees to open accounts without informing the customers (YouTube, 2018). Although the management says that these was not the company’s culture as reported by the employees. The same workers who were engaging in opening more accounts were working in the same roof

Wells Fargo, the world’s most valuable retail bank, has been fined to pay $185 million dollars after the exposure of schemes that defrauded customers in line with a business model, organized from the highest levels of the company, to boost its profits and growth (Beams). According to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the bank opened 1.5 million store records and more than a large portion of a million accounts without clients ' authorization. Bankers moved assets from clients ' records into newly made accounts without their insight. The CFPB said that it resulted in customers being charged for insufficient funds or overdraft fees because the amounts that they were charged were not in their accounts. The bank also created more than 565,000 credit card accounts, of which 14,000 credit cards totaled more than $400,000 in fees and interest charges (Beams).

JPMorgan Chase operates in more than 70 different countries and operates through 4 primary divisions, consumer and community banking, commercial banking, corporate and investment banking and asset management. Wells Fargo is ranked as the world’s biggest bank by market capitalization and operates in 35 countries, and operates more than 50 different business lines. Out of all these big 4 banks, Wells Fargo has the highest customer satisfaction rating and has a very valuable brand reputation. Finally, the smallest of these competitors is Citigroup, who actually was the largest bank in the world prior to the 2008 financial crisis but suffered losses that dropped it to 4th place amongst the big 4.

SunTrust Bank is one of the nation’s largest financial institutions established in 1891and has it’s headquarter stationed in Atlanta Georgia. The bank offers a wide range of financial services from personal checking, mortgages, credit cards, investments and loans to consumers, businesses, commercial and corporate firms and has several branches and ATM across parts of the country but mainly in Southern States like Georgia, Maryland, Washington D.C and Virginia. During the fiscal year in 2012, SunTrust netted revenue of $10,475 million increase of 23.4% over the fiscal year in 2011 (SunTrust Bank Inc, 2013). In 2012, SunTrust bank became the seventh financial institution in the U.S history to be affected by a “distributed denial of service attack (DDos) orchestrated by the hacktivist group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam” (Kitten, 2012).

Shedding its holdings of a company will allow the bank to escape regulation by the fed. Banks will escape regulations by the fed removing the fed corporation as an expense of theirs. Banks such as, the bank of Ozarks, the little rock, ark bank are banks that are putting this elimination expense in perspective. BancorpSouth bank in Tupelo, Miss., has spoken out regarding this matter. Smith bank stated that as a bank they are spending an excessively amount of time, money and effort on an expense that they could easily work without. As the banks expel their contract with the FDIC banks would not have to go through those extra screenings, and the cost will be reduced. If the banks remove this cost of an extra layer of oversight led by the fed

On December 19, 2013, the field of information technology security was forever changed when Target publicly acknowledged that hackers have breached their system and personal information of about 70 million customers were stolen. This was an unprecedented event because before the breach many companies did not take IT security as seriously as they should. As the dust settled, the world witnessed what can happen when a company have a vulnerable security system. As impressive as this data breach look from a security perspective, the enormous attack wasn’t very ingenious. A few days before the Thanksgiving, a malware was installed in the target’s security and payment system designed to steal customers information from 1797 target stores in America. However, target could have easily prevent this attack they were more proactive about their security.