Countrywide Financial Reviews

Pros

The pay was hard to beat elsewhere

Cons

In order to earn that much money you had to trade the rest of you life outside of work. My family almost forgot who I was because I was working so much.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management is the primary reason this company is now part of Bank of America. So the advice I would give them is good luck in retirement.

Pros

It's getting bought by a bigger, stronger company.

Cons

Our name is mud and we were responsible for a large part of the global financial collapse by making loans to people who should not have them, therefore inflating global portfolios beyond their intrinsic values.

Advice to Senior Management

(For Bank of America). Have a stronger vision for the end user experience. The web site and marketing programs often seem set up to benefit BofA rather than the customer.

Pros

The best reason to work for Countrywide is that it is now a part of Bank of America. It is a great place to learn, and all of the people who work there now seem like genuine and intelligent people. At the lower level, they are trying to hire college talent in order to promote from within because they had trouble hiring executives externally in the past. The pay, for interns, is excellent. The perks are also spectacular, including free housing at an apartment complex fully furnished with a pool. You also get a free rental car for the duration.

Cons

The company has been and may still be in disarray. The company hiring and firing procedures is still unclear, as Bank of America H R has not fully decided how they are going to integrate the two processes. Thus, job security is still very low, and there will probably be more lay offs in the future. Also, because the company is so big, it may be difficult to get promoted from within quickly. It could take twenty years to rise to the top and, if you are willing, it could be a great place to work. Good luck with this situation.

Advice to Senior Management

Figure out your message and express it.

Pros

They're very open to hiring entry level employees if you show you have potential and drive. Its a good place to start off your career path.

Cons

Since there are a lot of entry level employees, some shine and others don't. So you may be stuck with working with a lot of incompetent co workers you may be stuck with. And these employees will be there forever. Management shy's away from dealing with dead weight. The salary range is much lower than other companies.

Advice to Senior Management

Have a better grasp on your employees and the talent on your hands. Work towards motivation and personal growth within each employee which in turn only benefits you and the company.

Pros

Still the most aggressive mortgage lender. Has many products and is in the process of adding some of the B of A specialty products

Cons

Recently the amount of bad press they received as part of the mortgage melt down. Overall they still have great brand recognition. They hold many A paper mortgages. The subprime mortgages are a small percentage of their overall portfolio.

Advice to Senior Management

None, they have handled the merger with Bank of America very well. They kept everyone informed of the process of merging two large entities. B of A is retaining many of the upper management team from Countrywide. B of A is a bank and Countrywide was the worlds largest mortgage company that concentrated on doing one thing...turning a loan application into a closed loan as quickly as possible.

Pros

Countrywide Bank offers good benefits and flexible hours. They provide training in Boston and support for their positions and allow you ample time to prepare to work there. They offer discount programs for many services including theme parks and cell phone packages. The offices are usually small and most times everyone works as a team. The main goal of this position is retention and if you are good at sales this should not be too difficult for you to do. All in all its a decent place to work if you are looking for a job which provides flexible hours but not great pay.

Cons

There is no real room for advancement. They have also been taken over by Bank of America and numerous locations are closing. They do not sponsor you for any licensing exams and do not allow for any opportunities for advancement. Unfortunately there is little to no future with this company. There is some favoritism by management to certain employees. Many workers leave early or come in late. The bonus packages leave much to be desired. The pay is definitely not great and there is a lot of "cold calling" involved with this position. You must also meet a quota for answering customer service calls every day.

Advice to Senior Management

Give more opportunities to advance.

Pros

Gained experience and knowledge into the financial and insurance industries.

Cons

Poor management skills and culture. Low compensation for the challenging work set forth to employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Require better communication skills and professionalism from leadership.

Pros

An excellent environment to to work. Nice culture and a laid-back life.

Cons

it became too big of a company so one tends to feel lost in the crowd. Some times there is no personal touch in the day-to-day work .. so I guess that is probably the only thing that was not good at CFC. otherwise it was a good place to have a long career... sometimes the career advancement opportunities also got limited.

Advice to Senior Management

encourage work and life balance.

Pros

There was some flexiblilty in work schedule in the team I worked for.

Cons

There was very much a "good ole boy" network. Although they promoted work/life balance...if you did not work yourself to death you did not move up the ranks.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop with the buzz words and rhetoric....just say what you are going to do and do what you say. We are all adults...no games...or programs for the sake of programs or to look like you are "doing the right thing"

Pros

There really is not a lot of good reasons to work for Countrywide. They used to have superior health benefits but for the past several years they have been scaling back and requiring the employee's to pay more out-of-pocket. Their insurance really isn't all that good any longer. I guess the best reason to work for me to work at Countrywide was that it was 15 minutes from my house.

Cons

They are a very reactive not proactive company. Half the time is spent putting out wild fires for management rather than being productive in your job.
Management is VERY prone to take credit for employee's work, it is a very dog-eat-dog environment. I have also seen that the abvility to move up in the company is somewhat based on how well the employee can "kiss up" and not based on knowledge or hard work.
Countrywide also tends to hire nonprofessional individuals which creates a nonprofessional atmosphere.

Advice to Senior Management

Having had the opportunity to work in three separate division during my career at Countrywide, I found that Senior Management is not involved enough with the work that is really going on. They are more concerned with covering mistakes they've made and having everyone work around the clock for insignificant reasons. With these inefficiencies, it causes more critical errors that has been in the long run the demise of Countrywide Financial Corp.