House panel to probe Wells Fargo opening of accounts

Tell that to the Wells Fargo & Co. customers who were stuck with almost $2.5 million in fees after thousands of bank employees, without customers’ knowledge or permission, opened more than 2 million unauthorized checking, savings and credit card accounts.

The letter, sent Friday to Stumpf, requests a response prior to a September 20 hearing before the Senate Banking Committee at which Stumpf is expected to testify.

But a June 2016 report by the National Employment Law Project published statements collected from employees at numerous banks, in addition to Wells Fargo, reporting questionable and possibly abusive sales practices. Further action, such as subpoenas, will be considered, Hensarling said.

Now the bank has been ordered by regulators to pay a fine of $185 million.

Wells Fargo has fired 5,300 employees connected to the problem.

Wells Fargo on Sept 8 settled allegations that it opened credit-card and deposit accounts for customers without their approval, while not admitting or denying wrongdoing.

Wells Fargo fell 1.5 percent to $45.44 at 1:12 p.m.in NY, on pace for its sixth straight daily decline.

In a letter Thursday to Stumpf, several Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee asked whether Wells Fargo’s board will exercise its power to take back compensation paid to senior executives responsible for the sales program.

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The fines amount to a bit more than the $124.6 million in stock and options Carrie Tolstedt, the former executive who headed the unit under question, left with when she retired this summer.

“I think the best thing I could do right now is lead this company, and lead this company forward”, he said.

After the scandal came to light last week, in which Wells Fargo employees created almost 2 million accounts for customers without their knowledge in order to meet internal sales targets, the bank has let go of 5,300 employees.

Washington, DC It’s bad enough when consumers have to pay excessive bank fees for transactions that have been reordered, or when they haven’t authorized overdraft on their account.

Wells Fargo employees beg to differ.

“Wells Fargo’s resulting market dominance has come at a significant price to the general public, because it has been achieved in large part through an ambitious and strictly enforced sales quota system”, said the complaint. The employees created phony email addresses to enroll existing customers in online-banking services, for example, and issued them debit cards they didn’t request. Much of the fraud occurred during Tolstedt’s tenure in the Community Banking division.