NEW YORK — It’s going to get worse for Wells Fargo before it gets better.
In the wake of the biggest scandal in the bank’s 164-year history, distrustful customers are not opening as many checking accounts or applying for credit cards, and branch visits and meetings between customers and bankers are down, too.
Wells has also been hit with several lawsuits from customers, employees and shareholders. There are calls from politicians for fraud charges against the bank. And Wells almost surely faces settlements and fines way beyond the $185 million it agreed to pay regulators when the scandal broke wide open last month.
Or, as Wells Fargo executives put it to Wall Street analysts, using what has become a remarkably common term in this age of corporate malfeasance, the bank’s legal expenses are likely to be “lumpy.”
Wells Fargo executives, including newly appointed CEO Tim Sloan, are having trouble quantifying what the long-term effect on the bottom line will be.
Investors expect Wells to walk away from this crisis mostly intact, but it is apparent that the bank’s recovery will be arduous.
For now, “our immediate priority is restoring trust in Wells Fargo,” Sloan said in a conference call with investors Friday.
The San Francisco-based bank is engulfed in a crisis that started in mid-September, when Wells reached a settlement over allegations that its employees opened up to 2 million bank and credit card accounts without customers’ authorization in order to meet high sales goals.
CEO John Stumpf abruptly retired on Wednesday.
At Wells’ 6,000 U.S. branches, there are signs that customers are backing away.
Wells reported a drop in what it calls banker and teller “interactions” in September from both a year ago and from August. Also, consumer checking account openings dropped 25 percent in September from a year earlier and 30 percent from August. Consumer applications for Wells credit cards also fell last month.
In addition, referrals for mortgages from Wells’ retail branches were down 24 percent from August. Wells is the nation’s biggest mortgage lender.
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