OCC Announces 3 Enforcement Actions Against Wells Fargo Leaders

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has completed the enforcement actions it pursued against 11 former Wells Fargo senior bank executives.

Three enforcement actions announced Tuesday (Jan. 14) stem from administrative litigation that began with the OCC’s Notice of Charges filed in January 2020, and were the last of the 11 such actions, the regulator said in a Tuesday press release.

“The decisions issued today explained that under pressure to meet unreasonable sales goals, thousands of employees at the bank engaged in widespread sales practices misconduct,” the release said.

The latest enforcement actions involved three former senior executives of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and their actions from 2013 to 2016, according to the release.

The OCC’s decisions found that they had unsafe or unsound banking practices, such as failing to challenge the bank’s incentive compensation program and failing to manage audit activity that would detect and document sales practices misconduct, the release said.

The three executives were ordered to pay civil money penalties of $10 million, $7 million and $1.5 million, per the release.

The eight other former Wells Fargo senior bank executives with whom the OCC reached resolution in earlier enforcement actions paid civil money penalties totaling about $43.2 million, according to the release.

Wells Fargo was fined by the OCC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the City and County of Los Angeles in September 2016. At issue in the actions from both the OCC and the CFPB was the sales culture at Wells Fargo and whether employees were pushed into meeting sales targets by any means necessary, PYMNTS reported at the time.

In February, the OCC terminated a 2016 consent order against Wells Fargo that concerned deficiencies and unsafe or unsound practices in the bank’s risk management and sales practices.

The OCC’s order terminating the consent order said: “The OCC believes that the safety and soundness of the bank and its compliance with laws and regulations does not require the continued existence of the order.”

Wells Fargo said at the time in a press release that the consent order regarding sales practice misconduct required the bank to revamp how it sells products and services.