America’s top banking regulator FDIC faces exodus of female staff with claims of a ‘toxic environment’ where one manager allegedly invited workers to a strip club and senior employees texted female colleagues photos of their penises

• Current and former employees have spoken out about the FDIC – accusing it of having a ‘sexualized boys’ club environment’ and failing to punish bad behavior
• Over 20 female staff have reportedly walked out as a result of repeated harassment, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal
• The FDIC is the body responsible for protecting the public’s money in the event of a bank failure

Female employees have fled a ‘toxic environment’ at the country’s top bank regulator, claiming senior staff sent photos of their penises and invited junior-level workers to strip clubs, according to a report. 

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) – the body responsible for protecting the public’s money in the event of a bank failure and ensuring financial institutions are following regulations – has been accused, in a report by the Wall Street Journal, of having a ‘sexualized boys’ club environment’ and failing to punish bad behavior.

Over 100 current and former employees interviewed said at least 20 women had quit due to an alleged culture of ‘sexual harassment and misogyny.’

The claims made to the WSJ – which span over a decade – include a male supervisor in San Francisco inviting employees to a strip club, a supervisor in Denver having sex with an employee and telling others about it, and multiple senior employees sending photos of their penises to female staff. 

All of the men at the center of the claims are reportedly still employed by the FDIC, despite various legal filings, union grievances and complaints relating to their alleged bad behavior.

Many of the allegations center on the FDIC’s ‘party hub’ 11-story hotel outside Washington, where employees stay when attending training. 

The FDIC spent over $100million on the hotel in the 1980s – and former employees told the Journal employees allegedly regularly get drunk, vomit in the elevator and urinate off the roof. 

Two of the former female employees who have spoken out – Lauren Lemmer and Kelsi Foutz – said they were repeatedly harassed by their male colleagues. 

One of the whistleblowers, Lemmer, quit her job as an examiner-in-training in 2013 after working for the regulator for three years. 

She told the Journal that during her stint with the FDIC she was followed back to her Dallas hotel room by a male colleague during training, invited to a strip club in Seattle by other bank examiners and sent an unsolicited naked photo by a colleague.

Lemmer said senior colleagues – including her supervisor Trevor McIntosh – regularly made comments over her appearance and her dating life.

She wasn’t the only woman to complain about McIntosh, in 2015, a union steward said he raised concerns about McIntosh as well.

McIntosh denied making sexual comments to the WSJ. 

An FDIC official said: ‘Harassment in any form is contrary to the FDIC’s values and our deep commitment to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace.’ 

She added that the agency aims to create a ‘safe and equitable environment where all employees can feel valued and respected,’ and will always ‘investigate and take appropriate action.’ 

On Monday, after the Journal’s report was published, FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said the FDIC had hired the law firm BakerHostetler to look into alleged harassment and discrimination.

Gruenberg told the Journal that the law firm would conduct a ‘top-to-bottom assessment’ and that changes would be implemented if they were determined to be needed.

Another supervisor, Randal Ditch, was demoted in 2014 to a nonsupervisory role after having sex twice with a subordinate female employee and a number of other agency violations, according to records of his case before the Merit Systems Protection Board.

He reportedly pressured her into doing a shot of whisky at work, telling her not to ‘be a p****.’

Kelsi Foutz, a senior risk management examiner who worked in Salt Lake City and San Francisco, quit last year over similar allegations.

She told the Journal she was advised not to raise a negative performance review with her reviewer as he ‘is just intimidated by tall, beautiful women,’ while two male managers advised her to ‘just smile and make him feel good.’

Her first experience with misogyny at the agency came after she joined at 21 years old in 2013. 

She said a senior married examiner told her he wasn’t having enough sex over lunch and added: ‘Obviously if I walked into this office and you were naked, I’d f*** you right here.’

The FDIC is an independent federal agency with fewer than 6,000 employees – it is funded by insurance premiums paid by banks, not the federal budget.

Around 60 percent of examiners were men in 2022 and made up 65 percent of executive management positions. 

Resignations of examiners-in-training more than doubled in 2021 to 54 percent from 24 percent the previous year, and rose to 62 percent in the first nine months of 2022, according to the WSJ.

An internal FDIC review cited struggles to retain examiners as part of the reason it didn’t detect problems with Signature Bank, First Republic Bank and Silicon Valley Bank earlier before they failed this year.

The high-profile failures are some of the most notable since the Great Depression and raised concerns about the country’s banking system.  

In 2020, the agency’s inspector general found the FDIC’s policies for preventing, identifying and disciplining sexual harassment were insufficient. 

It reportedly called the agency’s tracking of misconduct allegations ‘decentralized, untimely, incomplete, and inaccurate.’

Meanwhile, the agency’s report in 2020 cited a 2019 survey that found 8 percent of more than 2,300 respondents said they had been sexually harassed. Some 38 percent of those harassed said they didn’t report the incidents for fear of retaliation. 

A 2021 survey by the arbitration panel found that 18 percent of female FDIC employees reported having experienced some form of sexual harassment in the previous two years.