Wells Fargo is haunted by the scandals of the past. Now the US consumer protection agency is apparently demanding more than a billion dollars to stop investigations. Overall, the fourth largest bank in the United States had to pay more than ten billion dollars.
The US bank Wells Fargo is to pay more than a billion dollars in fines under pressure from the US consumer protection agency CFPB. This is reported by the financial news agency "Bloomberg", citing people familiar with the matter. The regulator's request reflects growing frustration with the bank, the report said.
The sum would be the highest fine collected by the CFPB. Wells Fargo also holds the current record. In 2018, the fourth-largest bank in the United States agreed with the authority on a payment of one billion dollars - but was allowed to offset half of it against another penalty that the bank had to pay to another authority. However, all this is only a small part of the penalties imposed in recent years. In the scandal surrounding fictitious customer accounts, the US Department of Justice 2020 drove three billion dollars. In total, the bank has had to pay more than ten billion dollars so far.
Wells Fargo has struggled with the aftermath of scandals since 2016. At that time it came out that employees of the Californian bank had opened a total of millions of false bank accounts or applied for credit cards for years - without the knowledge or consent of the customers concerned. This was intended to meet Wells Fargo targets. Since then, two CEOs have been fired.
The current head of the bank, Charlie Scharf, took over the helm in 2019 and tried to end ongoing legal disputes and lead the institute back onto a calmer path. The CFPB intends to use the requested sum to settle a number of investigations into auto and mortgage loans and customer savings accounts.
