Wells Fargo CEO Announces Changes to Retail Sales Practices

In a prepared statement before the House Financial Services Committee, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf addressed the steps the bank is taking to rectify its alleged illegal retail sales practices and to prevent similar events from happening in the future.

“This morning, I will update you on a number of steps taken to address our retail bank sales practices problem and make things right for customers who may have been harmed,” Stumpf told the Committee.

1. Bank Leadership Changes

“At Wells Fargo, we have new leadership in our retail banking business focused on insuring that all team members in our retail bank provide the best service to our customers.”

2. The End of Product Sales Goals

Stumpf announced plans to speed up the process of eliminating product sales goals.  “We recently announced the elimination of product sales goals for everyone in retail banking effective January 1.  Today I am announcing we are accelerating this process and ending all product sales goals effective at the end of this week. We want to make sure nothing gets in the way of doing what is right for our customers.”

3. Communication Procedures for New Account Applicants

“We now send out to all customers a confirmation email approximately one hour after opening a savings or checking account and an acknowledgment letter after a customer applies for a credit card.”

4. Contacting Customers with Open, Inactive Credit Cards

Stumpf discussed the status of the bank’s efforts to contact customers with open, but inactive, credit cards.  “We have begun contacting customers with open credit cards identified by PricewaterhouseCoopers to determine whether they wanted these credit cards.  It’s early in the process, but so far we have reached more than 20,000 of these customers and talked to them about their credit card accounts.  Fewer than 25% have told us they either did not apply for the credit card or they cannot recall whether they applied or not for the card.”