Wells Fargo is already facing heat from the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, various states and municipalities, and maybe even the Department of Justice for the fake account scandal surrounding the bank, and now the bank has more trouble.
According to a report from the Philadelphia Business Journal, a group of nuns and other religious investors are calling on Wells Fargo to cough up more information about the bank’s business practices and want structural changes to the bank’s leadership structure.
From the Philadelphia Business Journal report:
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility filed a shareholder resolution on Monday that called for the San Francisco-based bank to report on the root causes of the fake accounts scandal. Last month, Wells Fargo admitted that its employees opened as many as 2 million checking, savings and credit card accounts without the customer authorization in order to meet sales goals.
The ICCR, a group of asset managers and religious leaders that pushes responsible investing and corporate governance, also demanded a plan for improved oversight from Wells Fargo and suggested separating the chair of the board of directors and CEO roles.
The ICCR joins the states of California and Oregon in calling for a separation of the CEO role from the chairman of the board role at Wells Fargo, both of which are currently occupied by John Stumpf.
“At our meeting with Wells representatives last December, we pressed for disclosure and we were denied the truth,” said Sr. Nora Nash of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, a member of the ICCR.
“Now we are confronted with painful accounts of fraud including some 80,000 customers in Pennsylvania alone,” Nash continued. “As shareholders and customers ourselves we feel betrayed and have no choice but to call for a full review of business standards through this resolution which we hope other shareholders will support.”
The ICCR also stated that it would like to see a review of Wells Fargo’s business standards, including a report on the impact of the fake account fallout, as well as changing Wells Fargo’s executive pay structure to tie executive’s paychecks to “ethical business conduct and sustainability.”
