Public demands from Congress, consumers and investors that Wells Fargo explain their fraudulent practices are getting a response from company executives.
Wells Fargo received a $185 million dollar fine from the federal government on Sept. 8 for issuing hundreds of thousands of credit cards to customers without their knowledge and opening more than a million bank accounts without consent. (RELATED: Wells Fargo Just Got Hit With The Biggest Fine In CFPB History)
CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, defended his company and its recent efforts to thwart unsavory sales practices at its regional bank outlets. Stumpf blames branch-level employees for the mess in which the firm finds itself, and is moving towards eliminating the sales goals that led to this debacle. It was the sales quotas, Stumpf argues, that incentivized employees to engage in fraudulent behavior.
In the company’s own words, it says it plans to eliminate “product sales goals because we want to make certain our customers have full confidence that our retail bankers are always focused on the best interests of customers,” Wells Fargo tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.
In another interview, Stumpf countered claims of shady “incentives,” saying that”there was no incentive to do bad things,” and that the actions of low-level employees were “not acceptable,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Stumpf drove home the point saying that the firm does not want “one dime of income that’s not earned properly,” according to the Journal.
Wells Fargo assured the public that the company “objective has always been and continues to be to meet our customers’ financial needs and drive customer satisfaction,” in a press release sent to TheDCNF. Stumpf believes “this decision is both good for our customers and good for our business,” and furthermore, the “key to our success is the lifelong relationships that result from providing each customer with great value,” Stump is quoted saying in the release.
Wells Fargo is the largest bank if measured according to market cap Monday, and by Tuesday afternoon it was second only to J.P. Morgan Chase, the Wall Street Journal reports.
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