How Regulation Failed with Wells Fargo

If you Google the phrase “bank cross-selling,” you don’t get many hits about the recent Wells Fargo scandal, in which thousands of bank employees were fired for the most blatant sort of corporate fraud. “Team members,” as Wells Fargo prefers to call its employees, had strict mandates to sign existing customers up for additional products. Someone with a savings account should be convinced to open a checking account, get a credit card, transfer a 401(k), and maybe even take out a mortgage. The sales targets were so high that many employees found them impossible to meet, until someone hit upon an ingenious solution: ignore the customers’ wishes, as well as banking law and basic ethics, and open up new accounts even when the clients had asked them not to. In some cases, customers were charged late fees on accounts they hadn’t requested and that they didn’t know they had.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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