Ethics In Wells Fargo's Business Practices

The Wells Fargo scandal involved a variety of stakeholders who have stake in the issue; however, the main stakeholders include the consumers, the employees and their families, and stockholders of the organization. The affect these stakeholders suffer varies, but the ultimate affect the scandal has had is violation of trust by Wells Fargo and its leadership. When examining this situation, the main stakeholders who suffered the greatest harm from the scandal were the customers who fell victim to the fraud and had their privacy violated by an organization they trusted. In the course text, Trevino and Nelson spoke of the importance of trust and its importance in a service economy. Wells Fargo violation of the consumers’ trust has ultimately added

Q1 – What was up with Wall Street? The Goldman Standard and Shades of Gray.

Wells Fargo has a social responsibility to its customers to fulfill their economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic needs. The scandal has presented numerous legal issues. It was negligent of the bank's executives and managers by placing impossible sales goals on lower level employees then encouraging, and pressuring them to meet these goals. The use of customer's information for fraudulent purposes was an invasion of customers privacy. Wells Fargo has violated the Federal Trade Commission Act which protects customers from unfair practices and has also violated the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Thorne, 2011).

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was put in place to prevent corporations from committing accounting fraud or corruption. When a corporation manages somehow to get passed all the laws they do anything to keep the corruption going by covering up everything. With this going on the company’s main focus is keep the lies going and firing whoever is in the way. Wells Fargo has stated that they have fire over a hundred thousand people throughout the nation for being a part of the illegal activity in the company. Unfortunately for Wells Fargo employees are coming out from hiding telling their side of the story.

Wells Fargo Corporate Social Responsibility initiates of diversity and inclusion, economic empowerment, and corporate sustainability have contributed to social change in many ways that worthy of highlighting in this paper. However, I have selected to feature the following organizational activities related three social change and sustainability causes: (1) developing advanced clean technology, innovation and environmental solutions, (2) increase financial literacy and self-sufficiency, and (3) and advancing the need for diverse and inclusive businesses and leadership.

According to an article on www.housingwire.com, 2017, Wells Fargo CEO, Tim Sloan, made the decision to close over 400 branches in the United States. The fake account scandal fueled this decision because the company lost 746 million dollars in revenue. The closures can save Wells Fargo about 2 billion dollars by the end of

Consequently, Wells and Fargo did what was best for business, they would not hire a person because you endorse or support. However, these two men ethical standards for hiring were for the needed to keep the company moving forward to be successful. Therefore, everyone that worked for Wells Fargo had a responsibility to uphold and follow the policies that were set up by the company, no matter what levels or title you hail in the company. However, when dealing with other peoples’ money their ethics in the place where there is truthward people work for you. Some of these people worked in accounting make sure the book was right. By ensuring that all transactions are properly documented because back then there were no computers, you would have to keep up with a paper trail. By ethical standers, the organization’s is well established, their moral conduct to the customers and the business. Furthermore, Wells Fargo ethical morals were to implement people that have the ability excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills. Outstanding negotiating, conflict management, and decision-making skills and ability to interact with all levels of

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.

On Thursday, September 8, 2016, federal regulators found that over two million fake accounts were created in a scam from Wells Fargo (Dugan). According to the New York Post, it has just been discovered that the Wells Fargo former senior executive vice president, Carrie Tolstedt, is linked to the scamming of Wells Fargo customers (Report). The many other employees were fired since the scam was discovered in 2011, however, according to the New York Post, Tolstedt was praised by Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, allowed to leave, and not lose any of her compensation (Report). This incident was highly unethical and resulted in customers and employees losing their trust in Wells Fargo.

Even as the scandal broke, Wells Fargo continued to state that they were committed to putting their customers first (Merle, 2016). This was much the same rhetoric as their list of declared ethics statements, such as “be accountable for, and proud of, our conduct and our decisions”, and “comply with the letter and the spirit of the law” (Ferrell, Fraedrich, & Ferrell, L. 2013). In this case, they did neither. If the upper management does not consistently and continually exhibit the leadership insisting on ethical behavior, employees run amok. Another direct conflict with their stated value of “acknowledge and apologize for our mistakes, and learn from our errors so we don’t make them again” was the way in which they accepted responsibility for the fraud, but did not actually admit illegal behavior (CNN Wire, 2016). However, they did reevaluate the decentralized system.

“If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization,” (Noyce). I believe this quote holds a strong notation towards ethical leadership. Friday September 30th, 2016 I had the privilege of attending a panel discussion holding some of the brightest leaders in the financial and banking industry. The group of panelists were Samuel Golden, managing director and Co-CEO of Alvarez and Marsal’s financial industry advisory services practice, Andrew Moy, executive vice president and eastern division manager for Wells Fargo global banking, Paul Murphy, president, CEO, and chairman of Cadence bank, Daron Peschel, senior vice president in charge of the Houston branch of the Federal Reserve bank and a member of the bank’s

In 1852 Wells Fargo the first Wells Fargo bank was opened in New York city in the United State by Henry Wells and Buffalo mayor (from 1862 to 1865) William G. Fargo. Their mission and values remain majorly unchanged sense then. Their five values are: “People as a competitive advantage, ethics, what’s right for customers, diversity and inclusion, and leadership” ("Our Values"). Every company work by their values to meet their vision, but Wells Fargo decided to choose the other way in 20016 when the bank fined a$185 million in September 2016 after revealing that it was creating fake accounts to increase the sales of the bank sense 2011. Those accounts were created from the information and the accounts of existing customers, and those customers

Wells Fargo had said that they open 1.4 million fake accounts but eventually it went up to 3.5 million fake accounts. Those accounts weren’t use by the customers. Wells Fargo company discovered that their employees were the reason behind the scandal by using unauthorized credit card and bank accounts from customers who wasn’t activity using them. Wells Fargo realize that this problem was dating back since the early 2000’s. Wells Fargo also had another scandal that involved 570,000 auto loan customers who were charged with insurance that they didn’t use which eventually resulted in repossessing cars of those customers. Wells Fargo was fined for 185 million dollars after Wells Fargo said that the employees had opened fake accounts. Wells

It’s not very uncommon to see headlines of money hunger CEO’s or even a small group of decision making conducting unethical behaviors in their best interests. Generally, those conducting the unethical behaviors have the opportunity to gain from their actions. In the Wells Fargo scandal, this is not the case. This scandal was not acted out at the top, but yet through the front line employees. This scandal was also unusual due to the amount of

Well Fargo is currently being sued over 185 Million Dollars and 5,300 were fired for making fake account.