Comerica – “Limited potential for career minded bankers - Comerica is unable to face up to dysfunctional lending units.”

Pros

The overall Bank tries to create a cohesive environment for its employees (supportive, team effort driven). However, wether or not the "team" approach trickles down to each individual lending unit / group is questionable.

Cons

I worked in the Entertainment Department at Comerica. The three managers there have no interest in building a team, but are much more interested in keeping relationships and contacts to themselves. They fostered an environment of overt competition between all the lenders and support staff within the group. The cutthroat lenders got referred deals by these managers, while anyone else not ruthless enough to stab their co-workers in the back were seen as dead weight, even if these lenders try to approach lending to clients in a clear, transparent manner.

It was a difficult environment to work in, simply because there was no question as to what functions everyone else (other than the three managers) serves - a cog in the managers' machine to maximize their own bonuses. Turnover in this department has been 100% every couple of years for the past five or six years, which speaks to all the above.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior Management is oblivious to bad managers. They have no interest in looking at the realities of their banking divisions employee retention records and assess whether some of these extremely high paid managers actually do anything for the bank. This is not an anomally at Comerica.