The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency banned former Wells Fargo Bank CEO John Stumpf from participating in the banking industry Thursday. In settling with the OCC, Stumpf also agreed to pay a $17.5 million civil penalty to resolve longstanding problems during his tenure at the bank. Stumpf reached his deal with the OCC without admitting any wrongdoing.
John Stumpf left Wells Fargo & Co. with his image in tatters, lost more than $70 million through forfeitures and a clawback, and now faces a government fine and a lifetime ban from the financial industry. But that won’t upend his nest egg.
Federal regulators are fining former Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf $17.5 million and banning him from the banking industry for life for his role in a scandal in which company employees opened millions of fake accounts without customers' consent.
“The civil action brought against former Wells Fargo executives for defrauding millions of consumers is a step toward accountability at the company, but these charges on their own will not bring justice for employees who were unfairly scapegoated, or change the corrupt system in place at Wells Fargo that fueled the disastrous sales scandal of 2016 in the first place."
A Wells Fargo workers’ advocacy group, Committee for Better Banks, said the fines are “a step toward accountability at the company.” “But these charges on their own will not bring justice for employees who were unfairly scapegoated,” committee member Patrick Creaven said. He worked for the bank for five years in Concord, Calif.
"If Wells Fargo and Mr. Powell want to earn the trust of regulators, they need to earn it from employees first. That means showing up to listen to us about what needs to improve."
On Monday, Charles Scharf, Wells Fargo’s fourth CEO in three years, took the reins of a bank in turmoil. If he were to look around the Bay Area customer service center where I work, however, turmoil is not the first thing he’d notice. Instead he’d find nearly 400 dedicated and highly trained employees who have diligently helped Wells Fargo retain customers through some of its hardest years.
With CEO Tim Sloan recently announcing his retirement, Wells Fargo workers traveled to Dallas to urge shareholders to support resolutions requiring the bank to issue reports on incentive pay and gender pay equity at its annual meeting. Bank workers also delivered (yet again) a petition demanding the bank’s leadership meet with the Committee for Better Banks. to appeal to Wells Fargo shareholders at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting attend.
At the meeting on March 13, which has not been previously reported, Fed officials were told by four bank employees that little had changed within the bank’s culture since the scandal that engulfed Wells Fargo almost three years ago.
Refusing to back down after CEO Tim Sloan “snub” at U.S. House of Representatives hearing, hundreds of bank workers, CWA union members and community allies marched through downtown Minneapolis and descended upon Wells Fargo’s offices to deliver (again) a petition signed by over 19 thousand bank employees and customers demanding the bank’s workers be treated with respect and meet with the CBB in order to fix entrenched abusive conditions detailed in recent news reports.
Wells Fargo & Co.’s embattled chief executive, Tim Sloan — who has struggled to get the giant San Francisco bank past a seemingly endless series of customer abuse scandals — retired suddenly Thursday.
In an effort to help bank regulators meet their responsibilities of oversight, Wells Fargo employees met with Federal Reserve officials including two Fed Governors to provide information about their working conditions that could impact customers. This was probably a first-of-its-kind meeting and demonstrated the importance of making sure frontline bank workers voices are heard when regulators are trying to make sure megabanks like Wells Fargo act responsibly for both workers and customers.
CEO Tim Sloan “snubbed” bank workers at his hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services on March 12 when they tried to deliver a petition signed by thousands of employees and customers demanding he meet with the Committee for Better Banks to fix working conditions at the beleaguered bank.
To ensure politicians and regulators hear the truth about the bank’s working conditions, the Committee for Better Banks released a report, “The Wheels are still off at Wells Fargo” and spoke out about demoralizing working conditions. Responding to the bank’s claims that the culture of the bank had changed, Wells Fargo workers said, “No one uses the Ethics Line, they are useless and many people fear retaliation.” and “Initially the sales goals were removed, but now they are slowly coming back under different names. The pressure is increasing to a place where it was before the (2016) scandal broke out.”
A new study describes the importance of empowering frontline bank workers to creating a more sustainable banking system. “Tipping the Balance: collective action by finance workers create ‘regulation from below’” compare U.S. bank workers to other industrialized countries where most bank workers are unionized.
