Assignment from the sisters: What caused the scandals?
Published 12:00 am Saturday, March 10, 2018
A group of nuns upset about the spate of scandals at Wells Fargo just got the bank to agree to write up how it failed to prevent the problems.
This week, the nuns and other Wells Fargo investors announced the bank had bowed to their demands for the report, whose findings are expected to detail the root causes of the scandals, including at the board level.
“We are encouraged that they are finally agreeing to take this first step towards what we hope will be authentic reform,” Sister Nora Nash, of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, said in a statement.
News of the report comes as Wells Fargo continues to deal with fresh scandals as well as the revelations from nearly two years ago, when it was learned that employees may have created millions of accounts without customer knowledge to meet aggressive sale quotas.
Wells Fargo said in a statement that it will publish the “business standards” report on its website.
The Sisters of St. Francis and other members of the New York-based Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility were involved in the push for the report. The center is a coalition of institutional investors that presses companies to adopt practices it deems beneficial to society and the environment, such as curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
The state treasurers of Rhode Island and Connecticut had also called for the Wells Fargo report.
In a statement, Rhode Island Treasurer Seth Magaziner said that by producing the report, Wells Fargo is taking incremental steps toward reforming itself and re-establishing trust.
“Investors and customers deserve information on the culture at Wells Fargo which allowed systemic fraud to occur over years, and what the bank is doing to ensure ethical behavior throughout its lines of business,” Magaziner said.
Some investors have remained frustrated as Wells Fargo continues to stumble.