Our Associates Are at the Heart of What We Do

The information contained in this message is reflective of Capital One’s Founder and CEO's letter to associates. To read the full letter, click here.

As we navigate the rapidly evolving coronavirus (COVID-19) situation, our Capital One values – Excellence and Do the Right Thing – guide our decision-making at each step. The health, safety and well-being of our associates, customers and communities continues to be our top priority. And, we want to do our part to help eliminate the potential chains of virus transmission and to thereby slow its spread. 

Earlier this month, we began implementing measures to achieve social distancing and to work from home on a mass scale. Since then, we have taken additional, aggressive steps to protect associates in our call centers, bank branches, and cafés. Supporting our associates, while continuing to serve our customers, is a paramount concern. Some of the ways in which we’ve done this are as follows:

• Through remarkable ingenuity and teamwork, our operations teams have been able to massively increase the number of customer support associates who work from home. In just two weeks, we have increased the size of this team from 1,600 to over 13,000. 
• We made the difficult decision to temporarily close banking locations that do not have a physical barrier between associates and customers, including all of our Capital One Cafés and a quarter of our branches. At locations with drive-through windows or glass barriers, we continue to provide critical banking services with significant new safety precautions. 
• Across our workforce, more than 40,000 associates are using VPN to work remotely and securely. Our technology infrastructure and systems have proven to be effective and resilient. We have been able to serve customers, collaborate to solve problems, successfully manage critical functions, and keep the business operating at a high level. 

We are Doing More for Associates in Customer Support Roles

On March 11, we announced increased paid leave and more flexible attendance policies to allow associates to care for their families and loved ones. Over the past week, we took additional steps: 

• We increased pay by $10 per hour for branch ambassadors working in open locations and for roles that perform essential and time-sensitive banking activities that cannot be performed remotely.
• We increased pay by $5 per hour for other U.S.-based associates in roles instrumental to maintaining essential customer support, such as call center agents.

We are also working with partner organizations to ensure that vital contractors — who support our associates and keep our buildings and services running smoothly — are being taken care of during this challenging time. 

This is something that affects us all, and we are facing this together.