Pros
As a former People's employee it is honestly extremely difficult to come up with even one "pro" for working for M&T. After merging in September of 2022 we immediately stepped back 20 - 25 years in the banking world.
Cons
Many of the policies/procedures at M&T are extremely outdated and redundant. The amount of time and paperwork involved with certain requests and or transactions is insane. M&T offers little to no training and expects their employees to teach themselves or troubleshoot customer issues (which there seems to be no shortage of) via M&T's online portal ("Knowledge Now") while the customer is present, which is a waste of the customer's time. If employees can't figure it on their own they can try calling the back office and typically have to wait an absurd amount of time to get someone on the phone. When they do get someone on the phone it's 50 /50 that person will actually be able to help them. It seems some back office employees are simply reading from a script or putting us on hold to take 5 - 10 minutes to look up our inquiries on Knowledge Now and have no actual experience working in a branch. Instead of spending money on mergers and acquisitions invest money in your technology. The main system used in the company (Hogan) is literally from the 80's. Aside from that there are far too many systems at this company. Update and consolidate for efficiency! A good portion of middle management are clueless and useless. This is due to the fact that M&T is known for hiring managers with "manager experience", but NO "banking experience". It's hard to "manage" your staff when you're trapped in an office on conference calls and management meetings virtually all day. Managers should spend more time out on the floor with their staff to gain a better understanding of the onslaught of challenges we are facing on a daily basis. There is a serious disconnect between employees at the branch and middle management and the same goes for middle management and upper management. Bottom line, if management had to step in any given day to sub in and do one of their employees jobs the vast majority wouldn't know where to start. You can not effectively manage someone if you do not know and understand what their job entails. Put more stock and value into your retail customers. It seems M&T focuses primarily on their business customers. Legacy People's retail customers have noticed this and their patience has limits. The old saying "over worked/underpaid" couldn't be more accurate for this company. They are super cheap, period.