The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency fined three former Wells Fargo & Co. executives, including community banking risk officer Claudia Russ Anderson, and banned them from the banking sector for misconduct and “unsafe or unsound” sales practices.
Anderson will pay $10 million, the OCC said Tuesday in a statement. Also fined were Chief Auditor David Julian, who will pay $7 million, and Paul McLinko, the lender’s executive audit director, whose fine was $1.5 million.
A 2020 investigation by the OCC concluded that the executives opened millions of unauthorized customer accounts, transferring funds without customer consent and lying to customers that certain products were available only as a package deal.
The OCC also found that top bosses enrolled customers in online banking and bill-pay services without their consent, delayed the opening of requested accounts and products until the next sales reporting period, and falsified customers’ personal information.
A representative for San Francisco-based Wells Fargo declined to comment.
It specifically alleged that from 2013 to 2016, Anderson failed to credibly challenge the bank’s incentive compensation program and failed to institute effective controls to manage risks posed by sales practices misconduct. She also failed to escalate known or obvious risks, and repeatedly and consistently downplayed the misconduct, it said.
Collectively, those decisions harmed customers’ credit scores and damaged customers’ trust in the banking system, the OCC concluded, while the bank pocketed millions in customer fees to which it was not entitled, it added.
“In short, it was exactly the kind of wrongdoing that threatens the OCC’s mission of maintaining a safe, sound and fair banking system,” the agency said in the statement.
The OCC previously resolved claims against eight other former Wells Fargo senior bank executives, who paid civil money penalties totaling about $43.2 million.
Credit: Bloomberg
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