When Will Wells Fargo Get Its Act Together?

Wells Fargo is once again making headlines for being a terrible, unethical company even by the poor standards of the financial industry. Just over two years after the bank paid a $3 billion fine for opening millions of fake accounts in the names of actual customers, current and former employees are alleging that they were told to conduct fake interviews to fulfill Wells Fargo’s diversity policies.

Wells Fargo now has an official policy that for every open job paying more than $100,000, at least one “diverse” candidate—a woman or person of color—must be interviewed. But the company had apparently been doing what the NFL faces a lawsuit over: interviewing “diverse” candidates only after jobs had been promised to other (white, male) candidates.   

The New York Times found seven current and former Wells Fargo employees who were instructed to carry out fake interviews and another five who were aware of the practice. A company spokeswoman told the Times in an emailed statement, “To the extent that individual employees are engaging in the behavior as described by The New York Times, we do not tolerate it.” The spokeswoman also said that maybe this had happened in the past, but not under current leadership, which came in following the fake accounts scandal. But three of the Times’ sources said they had conducted or been aware of the fake interviews happening this year.

Wells Fargo told the Times that 77% percent of the people hired in 2020 and 81% of the people hired last year were not white men, but refused to say what those percentages were for people being paid more than $100,000.

Discrimination is not a new issue at Wells Fargo, either. Twice in recent years, it has paid out millions of dollars over discrimination claims, once paying nearly $8 million in back wages and interest after a Department of Labor claim that it had discriminated against more than 30,000 Black job applicants, and once paying a $36 million settlement in a lawsuit by Black financial advisers who said they had been steered into poor neighborhoods and away from opportunities.