Wells Fargo Widespread Fraud

I think in this case there isn't necessarily a right (or fast) approach. Like many of the other widely known corporate ethical cases, emphasis must be placed on reevaluation of their values and rebuilding trust and honestly with both their customers and the public as a whole. One thing I believe the corporation has to start doing is including ethical and moral benchmarks in their performance evaluations. They need to show the current and any new employees that success at Wells Fargo is measured both quantitatively and qualitatively. It is important to start the new ethical programs internally because the culture definitely needs some drastic changes. Once the corporate culture begins to change the employees will start displaying ethical values to the account holders. Once the customers begin to see the bankers consistently showing concern for them as people and not just ways to gain profit, the publics' view will slowly start to change. Management and regulation ...

It is important to first point out factors that made employees lock up their moral compass temporarily. Once you identify the factors that lead to unethical behavior and talk about it using ethical language it because more straightforward of what actions to take to avoid it and the bad reputation that goes along with it. Fortune.com points out three factors that left bankers at Wells Fargo susceptible to unethical behavior: feeling pressured, treating it as "just business," and separating their lives at work from their lives at home. 1. Feeling Pressured: Overly aggressive pressure on individual performance by the banks may have caused morality to decrease. Hard-to-reach objects cause morally disengagement by employees, morally disengaged employees are less likely to be loyal to the company and fail to see their actions as part of a bigger picture. To make the performance goals they felt they had no choice but to cheat or they may lose their job. Anxiety and stress ...

The Consumer Financial Protections Bureau (CFPB), which was the agency in charge of investigating the fraud case of Wells Fargo reached a total $185 million in fines for this long-term practice by Wells Fargo bankers of setting up fake accounts. But they do not necessarily think this fine was intense enough to really punish Wells Fargo enough that they learned their lesson: For obvious reasons, the most upset stakeholders in this ethical dilemma were the Wells Fargo bank customers. One such customer was Brian Kennedy, a Maryland retiree, who detected an unauthorized Wells Fargo account created in his name about a year ago. He then asked Wells Fargo about it and the bank closed it without much of an explanation given. He told CNNMoney "they lost me as a banking customer and I have warned friends and family." Customers must be able to trust their bank after all, isn't that why we use banks to keep our money safe. I think the two statements: one by a former CFPB...

As we all know the initial response of a company when a scandal is discovered is very important to how the public and media will react as more information comes to the surface. Unfortunately, the first response of Wells Fargo was to deny that any of this fraud was occurring and interfered with the investigation on multiple occasions. If they had nothing to hide they wouldn't need to be trying to stop investigators from digging into their records. This behavior of illegal account creation was so widespread in the company it is almost impossible to believe any executive who says that they were completely unaware. Wells Fargo eventually confirmed to CNNMoney that it fired 5,300 employees related to the shady behavior of fake accounts. Many employees who got fired also received fines for their work misbehavior. The company received the largest penalty since the Consumer Financial Protections Bureau (CFPB) was founded in 2011. The bank agreed to pay $185 million in fines, along wit...

Wells Fargo & Company American international banking and financial services holding company. Third-largest bank in the US by total assets ($1,930B). The company has an entire website dedicated to their history ( wellsfargohistory.com), which is definitely a differentiating element.  T he name Wells Fargo is forever linked with the image of a six-horse stagecoach thundering across the American West, loaded with gold.  This shows they take the history of the company very serious and find that to move forward you have to be aware of your past and founding roots: "...heritage continues as part of Wells Fargo’s identity today—in our values, with our service, and with our people." Wells Fargo prides itself on its tradition of providing financial services by the fastest means available from the stagecoaches of the past to the Internet today. There are 12 Wells Fargo museums that the public can visit in Alaska, Charlotte, Des Moines, Los Angeles, Minneap...

It seems like every week there is another major corporation in the news involved in a business scandal. Unfortunately recently, Wells Fargo is one of those companies that have been both breaking the law and acting unethically towards its clients. This is one of those cases that will be talked about and used as an example of what not to do for years to come. So what is so different about this scandal? The Wells Fargo scandal involved fake accounts set up by the bank using real customer money. The differentiating element of this case is how widespread the corruption was. Most ethical issues are by CEO's, department heads, or boards of directors who are greedy and trying to push short-term profitability; this scandal involved all the different levels of the organization. As discussed in class, employees take on different roles based on what coworkers and superiors are doing in the organization. This was no little-known issue- lots of workers knew about it and continued as if nothi...