Wells Fargo & Co. said retail customers opened 44 percent fewer new accounts in October compared with the same period a year earlier following the bank’s record-setting settlement with regulators over its cross-selling scandal.
The drop was 27 percent compared with September, the San Francisco-based company said Thursday in a statement. New credit-card applications dropped by half to 200,000 in October, the first full month since the lender disclosed the settlement on Sept. 8.
“We recognize we have work to do and we are focused on strengthening our relationships with existing customers and building new ones with potential customers,” Mary Mack, head of community banking, said in the statement.
The scandal erupted when Wells Fargo announced an $185 million settlement with regulators, after legions of its retail bank employees opened as many as 2 million unauthorized credit-card and deposit accounts for customers. Since then, the bank has eliminated product sales goals for its consumer bankers. The firm also shook up its executive team to win back customers’ allegiance, including the departure of former Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf last month.
“As expected, we continued to see declines in new account openings,” Tim Sloan, Wells Fargo’s new CEO, said in the statement. “We remain focused on meeting our customers’ financial needs by providing great service and quality products and will provide our next update in mid-December.”
Shares of the company, which dropped 4.9 percent this year through Wednesday, fell 0.7 percent at 9:31 a.m. in New York.
