John Stumpf apologizes in congressional hearing for 2m unauthorized accounts opened by staff but denies that the order for the scheme came from the top

Wells Fargo chief executive John Stumpf should resign, return his pay and be criminally investigated over the bank’s illegal sales practices, Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Tuesday.

The Massachusetts senator’s comments came moments after Stumpf said he was “deeply sorry” for the more than 2m unauthorized accounts his staff opened for the bank’s customers. The accounts, ranging from credit cards to checking accounts, were opened by thousands of the bank’s employees in an effort to meet Wells Fargo’s sales quotas and have already led to a record $185m fine.

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While testifying in front of the Senate banking committee, Stumpf said he was “deeply sorry” that the bank let down its customers and apologized for violating their trust.

“I accept full responsibility for all unethical sales practices in our retail banking business, and I am fully committed to doing everything possible to fix this issue, strengthen our culture, and take the necessary actions to restore our customers’ trust,” Stumpf said in his prepared remarks.

Warren accused Stumpf of “gutless leadership”, telling him that his definition of being accountable is to push the blame on lower-level employees who do not have a PR firm to defend them.

Warren questioned Stumpf’s compensation, asking him: “Have you returned one nickel of the millions of dollars that you were paid while this scam was going on?”

“The board will take care of that,” Stumpf said after attempting to duck the question. He also told Warren that this “was not a scam”.

Warren pointed out that during the time that the unauthorized accounts were being opened, the share price of Wells Fargo went up by about $30. Stumpf personally owns about 6.75m shares of Wells Fargo stock and made more than $200m just off his stock during that time, Warren said.

Last spring, Wells Fargo employees staged a protest in front of the corporate office in Minneapolis to draw attention to its sales quotas. One of the employees joining the protest was Khalid Taha, who at that time worked as a personal banker in San Diego, California.

At the time, Taha told the Guardian that in 2013 bankers like him had to sell about 20 products a day. In 2014, he said, the quota was lowered to 15 a day. Wells Fargo products include checking accounts, credit cards, overdraft insurance or travel insurance. Taha, who no longer works at Wells Fargo, said employees had to make their quotas in order to make ends meet.

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At the hearing Stumpf pointed out that the lowest paid employees at Wells Fargo earn $12 an hour and that the employees let go for opening unauthorized accounts were making “good money”, earning $30,000 to $60,000 a year.

“How much money did you make last year?” New Jersey senator Robert Menendez asked Stumpf.

“$19.3m,” said Stumpf.

“Now that’s good money,” said Menendez.

Stumpf was also grilled over the compensation package awarded to the company’s former consumer banking chief Carrie Tolstedt. According to Fortune, when Tolstedt retired earlier this summer she was slated to receive as much as $124.6m.

Tolstedt oversaw retail banking at Wells Fargo while about 1.5m deposit accounts and 565,000 credit cards were opened without customers’ permission.

Stumpf said that Tolstedt is leaving the company with no retirement or severance benefits. When pushed on whether he believes her pay should be clawed back, he repeatedly said that he does not sit on the human resources and compensation part of the board. He said that he will “respect and accept whatever decision they make”.

The bank had already agreed to refund customers for fees that were accrued on the unauthorized accounts. Additionally, the bank announced last week that it was ending the sales quotas that are at the core of this scandal. About 5,300 employees were fired for opening unauthorized accounts in order to meet their sales quotas. Yet even as he accepted responsibility and apologized, Stumpf insisted on Tuesday that the employees acted on their own.

“I do want to make very clear that there was no orchestrated effort, or scheme as some have called it, by the company. We never directed nor wanted our employees to provide products and services to customers they did not want or need,” he said. “It is important to understand that when an employee provides a customer with a product or service that she did not request or authorize, that employee has done something flat wrong.”

Stumpf told the lawmakers that he has made it clear at multiple town halls with the bank’s employees that he did not want unauthorized accounts to be opened.

Some find it difficult to believe that the bank and its management were not involved in the scheme or at least aware of the unauthorized accounts being opened.

“Wells Fargo is trying to blame the 5,000 workers that they have fired as a responsible party here. That’s simply not true. There is no way that 5,000 workers acted individually on more than 2m transactions,” said Shane Larson, the legislative director at Communications Workers of America, a labor union worker with US bank workers. “This behavior comes from the top at Wells Fargo.”



