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Wells Fargo Agrees to $1 Billion Fine Over Home and Auto Loan Abuses (reuters.com)
Wells Fargo got hit with a $1 billion fine Friday -- the largest ever issued by America's consumer protection agency. An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
Taken together, the mortgage and auto programs ensnared more than 600,000 customers and will require nearly $300 million in refunds, the bank has said. The programs allowed Wells Fargo to earn fees from unneeded car insurance and penalties on mortgage paperwork that the bank had botched. For homebuyers, Wells Fargo promised to "rate lock" or freeze the interest rate for borrowers who got their mortgage paperwork finished within a few weeks. When that deadline slipped and it was the bank's fault, Wells Fargo could blame the customer. The penalty for late mortgage paperwork often topped $1000, according to a borrower lawsuit...
Drivers stung by insurance fees were wrongly pushed into policies that they did not need... Insurers working for Wells Fargo pushed policies onto more than 500,000 customers who already had coverage, the bank has said.
The penalty comes 18 months after Wells Fargo "admitted it opened sham accounts for customers -- a practice that likely ensnared millions...
Wells Fargo agreed to the new $1 billion fine "without admitting or denying wrongdoing."
Drivers stung by insurance fees were wrongly pushed into policies that they did not need... Insurers working for Wells Fargo pushed policies onto more than 500,000 customers who already had coverage, the bank has said.
The penalty comes 18 months after Wells Fargo "admitted it opened sham accounts for customers -- a practice that likely ensnared millions...
Wells Fargo agreed to the new $1 billion fine "without admitting or denying wrongdoing."
Fine the execs. Until the execs lose their homes & their daughters have to give up their ponys they will not change their behaviour.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is going to get the death penalty for this.
Yes, and it'll be partisan: only the Republicans will want to kill it.
And now the banking industry is lobbying them heavily saying the problems that caused the financial crisis have been fixed.
I can say with 100% certainty that they haven't.
See, even if every banker has turned into a saint, all you need is some newly minted 26 year-old Harvard MBA who will look around and wonder why isn't any pushing the rules. He'll do so and get a 7 figure bonus. Others will follow and in order to get the big bucks, they'll have to bend the rules. Then as more catch on, they'll have to break the rules to get their bonuses.
We'll end up right where we were.
And add in the illegal collections - especially with student loans (that loan forgiveness after 10 years for certain professions? Yeah, right - Thanks DeVos!!)
The CFPB is the best thing that our government has done in decades for us little people and the fact that the Republicans - and it's ONLY the Republicans - want to get rid of it should tell us something about their values and priorities.
then it wasn't high enough.