Flagstar Bancorp Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Flagstar Bancorp

Pros – Good work environment and nice co-workers.

Cons – Pay is way too low.

Advice to Senior Management – Promote wisely.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Flagstar Bancorp

Pros – Flagstar was a great place to work for many years until the reorganization last year. There are still many good people working within Flagstar Bank.

Cons – Do not join Flagstar as an LO or branch manager. The leadership style of Senior Management is best described as "fear based" management. There's little to no communication. Emails and phone calls to management were regularly ignored and a response was rare. The support staff is grossly overwhelmed with their current workload and unable to support the sales staff. The sales staff is required to do far more than their share, but not compensated accordingly. Health benefits were extremely expensive and inadequate. All of this should begin to explain why this company went from 100+ home loan centers at the beginning of 2009 to roughly 20 home loan centers at the moment. After many years of commited service to Flagstar, it was very sad to see what the bank had become and far too easy to say goodbye.

Advice to Senior Management – If you truly intend to remain in the retail mortgage origination game, do it right or don't do it at all. The retail division has always felt like the "step-child" compared to the wholesale division. Your senior management team for your retail home loan centers bring nothing to the table. The fact that the two regional managers and the EVP have kept their job given the overall failure of the retail division in the past 18 months is amazing. Replace those three senior managers with a team of leaders who are encouraging, communicative and helpful. Develop a marketing plan speciifically designed for retail, not wholesale marketing pieces that are amended with retail contact info. Replace all of your technology. The current LOS technology is dated, complicated and time consuming (not to mention it was really designed for wholesale and simply given a retail interface in 2003). Get rid of your three websites you use (LOS, CRM, and Doc Management) and get one robust software package that does everything AND does it correctly. Much of the back-log within Flagstar could be eliminated with a new software package, but I don't think they can afford the cost to upgrade. Eliminate the "Centralized Support Center" idea. All the tweeks that have been applied over the past few months have only made things worse. Given the current environment within Flagstar, you will not be able to attract and retain quality loan originators until you make major changes in the retail division.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Flagstar Bancorp

Pros – Good Compensation
Decent Benefits
Work-Life Balance is good

Cons – Clueless Management
Only people belonging to the 'inner circle' have their ideas heard
distrust between groups is encouraged by management
morale is rock bottom
7.5 hour workday that is boasted by HR is a complete joke to salaried staff
Salaried people have to badge in and out with the hourly people but aren't paid overtime. Instead, it is used as a barometer of who is dedicated and who isn't
Expectation that you are available for monthly builds on weekends but aren't givent any comp time for it

Advice to Senior Management – Consider fry-cook at McDonald's, but you are probably under-qualified
Why do you think that so many people are leaving who are not managers?
Don't expect people to stay around when you tell them that they should be considered 'blessed' for staying at such a 'great company', give out nothing for raises and then expect the rank and file staff to pick up the work of three other people that you laid off due to your incompetence.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Flagstar Bancorp

Pros – Friendly customers that continue to come back and see you!

Cons – Some of the management isn't that great, if you turn down a position because of its location, you are shunned from that day forward, your ability to move up is hindered

Advice to Senior Management – Should look at some of the managers who you employ are they really looking for for the needs of the customers, the business, and the branch?

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Flagstar Bancorp

Pros – You do get 3 weeks of vacation a year

Cons – Open 7 days a week, and 7:30a.m. - 7:30p.m. Monday-Friday

Advice to Senior Management – No one comes to the branches that early or that late. All the Retail banking employees hate the hours. Also, we are dead on Sundays. Cut Sunday and shorten Monday-Friday and your employees would actually enjoy the job a little.

Former Employee – worked at Flagstar Bancorp

Pros – In IT, you can do whatever you wish, as the only standard practice is to make up your own personal standards.

Cons – Regarding IT software development management: none are competent, all are wishy-washy and unwilling to take a stand on anything, especially development standards. None are qualified for the job and would be better off doing another type of work: your best doers are not generally your best managers.

New management is totally ineffective: they added another layer without ousting any of the managers that are holding the company back. This is especially true in IT and loss mitigation.

Advice to Senior Management – How can you continue to ignore the bleeding in loss mit?!?!? Remove the old management, choose an automated method to improve the workflow, and get the work done. If need be, bring in new staff that aren't so locked into the old manual ways of doing things.

I have never seen a takeover involve NO firings of existing management. The new management needs to root out the deadwood and get things headed in a positive direction.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Flagstar Bancorp

Pros – The dental and vision benefits are fairly good. Vacation time is adequate.

Cons – Fear is the number one tool management uses to provoke results. The pay is below industry average, around $12/hr for Personal Bankers monthy bonuses are around $75-$100. A lot of the time PB's are in charge of the bank when the mangers are at job training and manager meetings.

Turn over is very high and doesn't seem to be slowing down.

If we don't reach our goals they make everyone at the branch come in on the last Saturday of the month.

We haven't has raises in 3 years...

Advice to Senior Management – Morale is very low. Stop treating employees as "costs" that need to be "constrained"

Negative re-enforcement will only work in the immediate short term. The company needs a serious attitude overhaul and it must start from the Top – Down

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Flagstar Bancorp

Pros – 7.5 hour work days, and finally adpoting buisness casual dress code are about all I can think of.

Cons – After becoming a distressed company and being purchased by Matlin Patterson in 2008 things have really fallen apart. Be warned that this company has slashed the I.T. department quarterly since then. Only with the recent improvement in the job markets has hiring re-started. Most currently employees will admit to looking for new employment elsewhere and their churn rate is on average 1 employee leaving per week.

While Boasting an "Agile" development shop, this is rather new and poorly implemented with more paperwork and requirements than some waterfall approaches. The technology is fragmented across multiple systems, languages and even within languages. A good example would be the use of Struts 2, 3 and Spring or Ant and Maven or Java 1.4-1.6 depending on the day.

If you are in need of a job to feed your family, perhaps consider an offer but don't stop looking. If you think this warning may be outdated as about the newly Morale committee (2010) and what they are doing to improve morale and reduce the number of veteran developers leaving.

Advice to Senior Management – Trim your management down, or find something constructive to do with the mid level managers.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Flagstar Bancorp

Pros – It would be a job. They pay you every two weeks. You will be one of a few people left.

Cons – Tough work environment. No raises in 3 years. No promotions. More work and less people to do it. Tough place

Advice to Senior Management – Pay and value your employees. Give a group of good employees a raise. Stop staff from leaving and hire a few people.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Flagstar Bancorp

Pros – Easy to shine, but no reward for going the extra mile.

Cons – Very, Very low pay. No raises going on 3 years now. Sometimes you have to work from 7 to 7. 7 day work weeks, no weekends. All for 10-14 dollars an hour; seriously.

Advice to Senior Management – Copy other banks. If it works for them is should be a no-brainer. Pay more, pay more.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend