WASHINGTON–The president of the Independent Community Bankers of America is calling for the replacement of the management team and board at Wells Fargo Bank following recent news that the fake account scandal at the bank is much larger than had been initially believed.
As CUToday.info reported here, the bank has indicated that additional investigation shows that as many as 3.5 million bogus customer accounts were opened by employees, up from the initial estimate of 2.1 million. The bank has also been the subject of numerous other lawsuits related to other aspects of its operations and practices.
“Week after week, month after month, additional scandals are uncovered at Wells Fargo involving hundreds of thousands of customers,” said Camden R. Fine, president and CEO of the ICBA. “The most shocking aspect of the multiple Wells scandals is not that some of these practices have gone on for years—it is that federal regulators have taken no meaningful action against the board and senior managers who were supposedly responsible for the ethical, moral and legal conduct of the bank. Federal regulators haven’t even given them a good slap on the wrist.
“Had this been a community bank board and senior managers, not only would they all have been removed from the bank months ago, but they would also be facing prosecution,” Fine continued. “Yet nothing has happened to Wells, its senior management or its board.”
Fine called Wells Fargo’s conduct “outrageous and unacceptable,” and added, “No community bank would have been given this kind of regulatory deference. There is not supposed to be a double standard for regulation and enforcement in this nation, but the wrongdoings of Wells Fargo show us that apparently one exists for too-big-to-fail banks. Federal regulatory authorities are too compromised to take meaningful action against the too-big-to-fail banks like Wells Fargo. We all know that too-big-to-fail is too-big to-manage. Now it appears that the nation’s largest financial firms are too big to regulate as well.”
After saying that “this egregious mayhem done upon millions of America’s customers has got to stop,” Fine added, “The Wells Fargo board should be replaced, and so should its senior management. End of story.”