Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf (Charlie Scharf) said on Wednesday that the bank is more confident in the progress it has made in addressing compliance issues after years of false account scandals, and detailed its efforts to implement risk controls.
He said at the Goldman Sachs Financial Services conference, “For every consent order we have received, for each of our regulatory deliverables, we have very detailed plans, and the regulators have reviewed these plans.” (A consent order is a legal agreement approved by a judge or court to resolve a dispute between the parties without a trial.)
“We track our progress every week on the Operations Committee,” Schaff said.
Wells Fargo is in the final stages of passing regulatory tests to lift the $1.95 trillion asset cap next year after resolving the issue of the fake account scandal, according to media reports last month.
Since 2011 or even earlier, many frontline employees of Wells Fargo illegally opened more than 2 million “ghost accounts” without consumer authorization, leading to the dismissal of 5,300 employees before and after, the CEO resigned, suffered huge fines, board restructuring, and the Federal Reserve limited its asset expansion in early 2018.
In September 2016, Wells Fargo admitted opening a total of 2 million “ghost accounts” with 0.56 million credit cards remaining, involving all US states.