Wells Fargo executives will forfeit millions of dollars in the wake of revelations that the bank’s sales quotas led to the creation of more than 2m unauthorized accounts.

The bank’s chief executive, John Stumpf, will forgo his salary for the coming months as independent directors launch a new investigation into Wells Fargo’s retail banking and sales practices.

Last year, Stumpf made about $19.3m. Stumpf will also forfeit unvested equity awards worth about $41m.

Carrie Tolstedt, who oversaw retail banking at Wells Fargo while the unauthorized accounts were opened, was slated to receive as much as $124.6m after retiring this summer, according to Fortune. The bank said on Tuesday that she would not receive an undisclosed severance and would forfeit about $19m in unvested awards.

Less than three weeks ago, Wells Fargo announced that it had agreed to pay $185m in penalties after an audit found that its employees opened as many as 1.5m deposit accounts and 565,000 credit card accounts without customers’ consent. The accounts were opened by the bank’s staff in hopes of meeting their monthly sales quota and earning their incentive bonuses.

Wells Fargo workers have tried to draw attention to the “unreasonable” quotas before – some even staged a protest in front of the bank’s headquarters last year.

When Stumpf testified in front of the US Senate last week, he drew ire from US lawmakers. Many of them called for the bank to recoup pay from Stumpf and Tolstedt and hold them accountable.

While the bank insists that the creation of unauthorized accounts was not part of an orchestrated effort, many lawmakers expressed doubt that thousands of employees acted on their own.

Stumpf was scheduled to testify in front of the House financial services committee on Thursday. Many expected the hearing to be much of the same, including calls for clawing back the executives’ pay.



Wells Fargo pre-empted that by announcing the clawbacks on Tuesday.

The board also reserved the right for further clawbacks pending the results of its investigation.

“Based on the results of the investigation, the independent members of the board will take such other actions as they collectively deem appropriate, which may include further compensation actions before any additional equity awards vest or bonus decisions are made early next year, clawbacks of compensation already paid out, and other employment-related actions,” Stephen Sanger, lead independent director, said in the statement.

The bank also announced that it is ending its practice of sales quotas three months earlier than previously stated.

“While we continue to determine the details for 2017 goals and incentive plans for the retail bank, we are taking steps to accelerate the removal of product sales goals effective 1 October 2016, and put greater emphasis on delivering the best customer experience,” the bank said in a statement provided to CNBC. “We are also making adjustments to ensure that as we make changes, we maintain fair and consistent compensation for retail bank team members.”

This month, the bank announced that it planned to end its sales goals by January 2017.

When Stumpf testified in front of the Senate last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told him that he demonstrated “gutless leadership” in blaming the unauthorized accounts on the 5,300 former employees.

“This is about accountability,” she said. “You should resign, you should give back the money you took while this scam was going on and you should be criminally investigated by both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. This just isn’t right.”

Warren said that Wall Street executives were not held accountable in 2008 “when they crushed the worldwide economy” and were not being held accountable now, either.

“The only way that Wall Street will change is if executives face jail time when they preside over massive frauds,” Warren told Stumpf. “Until then it will be business as usual, and at giant banks like Wells Fargo, that seems to mean cheating as many customers, investors and employees as they possibly can.”