Wells Fargo’s Darlene Goins Leads Partnership With Operation Hope Removing Barriers To Financial Inclusion

The right financial programs and participation from determined individuals can uplift entire communities.

As financial health remains at the forefront of people’s minds, they are delving deeper into developing a healthy mindset. Economic inequality and financial illiteracy have been at the systemic root of society’s challenges for hundreds of years. Now with capital improvements to marginalized communities increasing, more people have started taking charge of their finances.

However, the percentage of people considered financially healthy decreased from 34% in 2021 to 31% in 2022. The Financial Health Network suggests these declines were likely shaped by elevated inflation, the end of pandemic-era government interventions, and higher personal spending than earlier in the pandemic.

Darlene Goins, executive vice president and head of banking inclusion initiative for Wells Fargo, is committed to helping more people who are unbanked gain access to affordable and mainstream bank accounts. Partnering with Operation Hope, founded by John Hope Bryant, there’s a focus on removing barriers to financial inclusion for Black and African American, Hispanic and Native American households, which account for more than half of America’s 5.9 million unbanked households. Goins leads the overall strategy and cross-enterprise teams building programs that support and track the initiative’s progress. She was presented with the 25th Annual Madam C.J. Walker Legacy Award by the National Coalition of 100 Black Women Oakland/Bay Area Chapter earlier this month.

“We’ve teamed up with Operation Hope to bring their financial coaches into select Wells Fargo branches and make free financial coaching and education available to the community,” Goins shares during a Zoom interview. “You don’t have to be a Wells Fargo customer to take advantage of those services. It’s important that we help uplift communities, and help all community members, whether they’re Wells Fargo customers or are not fully engaged in the economy, strengthen their financial stability and financial health. The financial coaches, for example, build relationships with local community-based organizations and hold financial education workshops. There’s a financial coach that is visiting prisons and working with those people that are going to be released soon.”

Goins’ commitment to economic equality started during college as a Delta Sigma Theta Sorority member. After graduating, she held leadership positions at Nomis Solutions, First Data Corporation, and ALI Solutions.

It wasn’t until she transitioned over to FICO in 2012 that she pushed out of her comfort zone, building programs to help communities thrive. During that year, many educational credit scores flooded the market, creating consumer confusion around credit scores. To clarify, educational scores aren’t used in lending decisions.

A senior scores executive approached her, asking to develop a strategy and an approach to make FICO scores available to more consumers.

“I remember vividly him standing in my office doorway, encouraging me to take this on,” Goins recalls. “If I did it right, this would take me to the White House. So reluctantly, I said, ‘Ok, I’ll do this.’ Within six weeks, I gathered the voice of the customer. I examined the competitive environment. I devised a strategy to educate, engage, and empower consumers to take control of their credit; to improve their credit scores. FICO was already working with financial institutions. They were buying FICO scores tens of millions of FICO scores. And the way to do that was to work with the financial institutions to enable them to share the FICO scores they were already purchasing with their customers for free. So that was a completely different approach than what had been tried in the past.”

As a result, Goins led FICO® Score Open Access, a consumer credit score program that empowered consumers to take control of their credit health. Her work even earned accolades from the Obama administration, regulators, and consumer advocacy groups.

After joining Wells Fargo in 2016, she worked from the head of hands-on banking to the head of financial health philanthropy for the Wells Fargo Foundation. Now, Goins is leading the initiative of placing Operation Hope programs in its banking branches.

HOPE Inside, Powered by Wells Fargo launched in April 2022 in Houston, Atlanta and Oakland. Wells Fargo has committed by the end of 2023 to expand from 13 markets serving 13 branches to 20 markets serving 150 branches.

Bryant states, “I wanted the money center bank, meaning one of the larger five institutions in America. I have our community banks, regional banks, and major corporations, but I wanted to prove the model at scale, which means I needed a money center bank to sign on, and I needed them to sign on in a big way.”

Already, the program through Wells Fargo has had a significant impact, including:

• $485 increase in savings
• 28% of the client reduce debt by $1,308
• Potential access to capital of $690K

Daniel Mijango, Operation HOPE, HOPE Inside Client Wells Fargo, HOPE Inside Los Angeles shares that he had a 620 FICO Score and $420 in savings when he joined. After losing his job, he struggled with credit card debt. Joining HOPE helped turn his situation around, increasing his score to over seven hundred.

“The first step my HOPE coach Alejandra took was to sit me down and audit my statements to review my money habits and find the root cause of the problem.”

Additionally, Goins serves on the boards of national nonprofits Prosperity Now, the BAI and the American Bankers Association Foundation. She also serves as treasurer of the San Francisco Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc.

As Goins pivots in her career, she focuses on the following essential steps:

• Don’t be so quick to say no to a new opportunity; consider where it will lead you. You never know what saying yes will do for your career.
• Be confident in your skill set and what you bring to the table—stop second-guessing yourself.
• Make sure you’re authentic to yourself and the decisions you make.

“As the Wells Fargo Foundation began to think about its strategy going forward in developing four pillars, one of which was financial health philanthropy, I had formed a great relationship through mentorship with a leader at the time,” Goins concludes. “It developed into a sponsorship relationship. So when it came to me applying for that leadership role to lead financial health philanthropy, I had him as a sponsor advocating for me in the room, which is so important. Particularly for women to advance in corporate America, we need the sponsors in the room, including the male sponsors, to advocate for us to get that next role, that next opportunity.”

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