Senate Banking Committee to Host Wells Fargo Hearing

The Senate Banking Committee's Republican majority said late Monday that it expects to hold a hearing on Wells Fargo & Co., which was fined $185 million last week for questionable sales practices.

A spokeswoman for the banking committee's majority, led by Sen. Richard Shelby, said the committee planned to hold a hearing Sept. 20. The spokeswoman, Torrie Matous, said the committee intended to question Wells Fargo CEO and Chairman John Stumpf as a witness, and that the committee had already informed him that his presence was requested.

The move comes after committee Democrats had called earlier Monday for a hearing. "We should accept nothing less than a full and transparent explanation of what went wrong, who is responsible, how to fix it, and how to prevent such fraud in the future," the Democratic senators wrote.

Wells Fargo has faced a public and political storm after entering into an enforcement action last week with two federal regulators and a local official over sales practices that included staff opening as many as two million accounts without customer authorization.

Several Wells Fargo executives are scheduled to brief the Banking committee on Tuesday and regulators are expected to meet with them later this week, according to people familiar with the matter.

Also on Monday, Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, who chair the Senate Special Committee on Aging, said they were asking the CFPB for more information about the settlement, including whether it disproportionately affected senior citizens. In a Monday letter to the CFPB, they asked whether the agency had examined alleged victims were over 65, and whether it has worked with other branches of government to pursue civil or criminal penalties.

Write to Christina Rexrode at christina.rexrode@wsj.com and Aruna Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com