According to the more than 5300 Wells Fargo’s former bank staff, direct cause of fraud is the bank directly linked employee compensation and sales performance. To face the difficulty of matching the sales aim, they had no other choices but to take a risk, and ultimately will inevitably damage to the interests of customers as the
Wells Fargo fired 5300 employees. The employees took millions in fees by regularly opening new
The questionable issue really close by kind of is Wells Fargo essentially has discovered generally phony records that definitely were made without buyers having any information that the records for the most part were being made in a kind of big way. The underlying examination led uncovered that out of nighty-three point five million records audited around two point one million basically were resolved to definitely be sort of phony (McCoy, 2017), which definitely is fairly noteworthy. The initial examination uncovered that out of one hundred sixty-five million records inspected near three point five million of them were found to be unapproved accounts, or so they particularly thought. The organization really has chosen to literally organize its picture fiscally to the world as opposed to literally remain consistent with what it particularly was established for, sort of contrary to popular
The article,”To Disclose or Not to Disclose? Wells Fargo Woes Shine Light on a Knotty Problem
It seems that the company does not think it feasible to try to recovery their loses from employee, Lisa Leslie, and therefore goes after the bank for allowing her to steal from them. Is the bank at fault? Does the bank have an obligation to their customers to protect them from fraudulent activity? In short, yes. Customers trust banks to do just that.
Over the past five years Wells Fargo employees opened 2 million phony accounts for customers without their knowledge. The phony accounts helped employees reach sales goals while leaving customers with monthly charges from the false accounts. Since September when the fraud was discovered Wells Fargo has paid fines, stopped employee incentive initiatives and CEO John Stumpf forfeited his performance pay (Merle). The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created after the financial crisis issued Wells Fargo the largest fine since its creation in 2011. (Talton). The CFPB hit Wells Fargo with a $185 million fine, the largest in their history and is being scrutinized for being an amount that is easily payable by Wells Fargo and will not be
I doubt that Wells Fargo had done an independent investigation to find the root cause of the problem, otherwise, they would have reached to the same conclusion that top management's obliviousness on purpose was a crucial factor in elongating this problem. Not taking any action against the unlawful act is same as facilitating the unlawful
(2)Since 2011, Wells Fargo’s employees have been secretly creating millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts, and some Wells Fargo employees even created fake Personal Identification Numbers (PIN) as well as fake email addresses to give the illusion of a growing customer base. The fake accounts earned the bank unwarranted excess fees, which led to increased sales figures. Everyone who had a legit account with Wells Fargo and the people who owned stocks in Wells Fargo were affected. Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said, “Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses" (Cordray, 2016). The unethical behavior led to the termination of about 5,300 employees, and eventually Wells Fargo had to pay over $185 million dollars in fines, plus an additional $5 million to each affected customer.
In my opinion, this scandal is much deeper then it appears. It looks like we have a case were the company is corrupt at the very top, where these unreasonable expectations came from. Employees of the company felt like they had to go to extreme measures and do illegal things simply to keep their jobs. This is not fair nor should it be allowed. The main underlying problem in this situation is that Wells Fargo is not being ethical towards their employees. These employees have responsibilities, such as feeding themselves and their families, so of course they will go to extreme measures to keep their job. The more I read into this case the more I felt like the heads and directors of Wells Fargo were in the wrong more then the people that were actually
Thank you for contacting us to look into whether you might be able to bring an individual claim for telephone calls you received from Wells Fargo. As this point we have to decline representing you in this matter.
Bank of America is one of the largest banks in the nation. It is a multinational company and it is recognized by its high revenue value. Unfortunately, Bank of America has endured many complaints and harsh views regarding their lack of ethics. Ethical issues occur when there is a blatant disregard to implement integrity, trust, and responsibility. In some financial institutions, ethical matters are displayed in the way the consumers are treated. Within the past nine years, Bank of America has diminished all of their ethical promises by revealing customer information without their permission; discriminating against consumers based on their race; and manipulating overdraft fees in order to benefit the bank. In order to assess these problems, it is vital to recognize what Bank of America claims to stand for and determine where their most concerning issues are generated from.
On September 8 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP) announced that it was taking an enforcement action against Wells Fargo Bank . Wells Fargo is a Fortune 100 company and one of the "Big Four Banks" of the United States. Investigations conducted by the Bureau revealed that employees of the bank created unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts across the country to meet sales goals. Over the years, the bank’s employees opened over 1.5 million fraudulent bank accounts and 0.5 million fake credit card accounts for customers, to meet sales targets and obtain bonuses. The affected consumers, were being harmed by the associated charges and fees for these accounts. The fees include insufficient funds or overdraft fees for the deposit accounts and annual fees for credit card accounts.
Until the intent or motive is recognized, a problem cannot be described or solved. This should be a major question to ask in the Wells Fargo case. Most workers, especially in sales and marketing jobs are known to be compensated and promoted based on their performances (number of products and services sold, number of set targets met). So it is possible that Wells Fargo compensation and promotion structure motivated these employees to engage in such fraudulent acts in order to boost their incentives and bonuses which was measured based on their performance. Because it is surprising that such huge number of employees would engage in such acts to cheat customers for a period of five years. Both former and current Wells Fargo employees told regulators that their motivation to open unauthorized accounts was because of the compensation policies and felt extreme pressure to do that to benefit from such policies (Corkery
In September of 2016, it was revealed that there was alleged misconduct at one of the largest and safest banking institutions in the United States. Wells Fargo Bank was ranked among the nation’s safest financial institutions according to an analysis done by Global Financial, (Inside Tucson Business, 2009). Alleging that between May 2011 and July 2015, there were more than 2 million bank accounts or credit cards opened for customers without their knowledge or permission (Blake, 2016). Clients started complaining the they were receiving debit/credit cards from the bank that they had not ordered. Wells Fargo employees also started complaining that about the unethical behaviors they witnessed or were asked to participate in to the Human Resource Departments, the bank’s internal ethics hotline, branch’s individual managers and supervisors. All which led to the discovery of the fraud scandal.
Scandals in the business world are not an uncommon topic to appear in new headlines. Recently Wells Fargo has fired over 5,000 employees for creating over 2 million fake accounts. New bank and credit card accounts were created without prior knowledge from their customers. The accounts that were created resulted in those customers inquiring fees such as overdraft fees. These fake accounts have been created over a five-year timeframe.
According to Daniel F. Dooley (2008), a member of the Commercial Fraud Taskforce, financial fraud with private middle-market companies is on the rise. In fact, Mr. Dooley believes that he has seen more instances of fraud in the past two years than in the previous ten. He notes seven areas in which financial fraud has increased over the past few years: