Wells Fargo Slammed By California for Sales Practices

Wells Fargo is in hot water again, this time with the state of California. Its insurance commissioner is seeking to suspend or revoke Wells Fargo’s insurance licenses for allegedly opening 1,500 insurance policies without customer’s knowledge or permission. Most of them for renters insurance and were created online using bank accounts that belonged to the customers. The customers were not aware of this. In some cases, the customers were told they were getting an insurance quote, but the employees submitted applications to buy insurance anyway. They did not have permission from the customers to do so. Their bank accounts were then auto-debited to pay for the policy premiums. Earlier this year, in October, the bank was ordered to refund $80 million to customers who were wrongly charged for auto insurance from 2012 until 2017. Last year, the bank was fined $185 million in fees that customers were charged in a scam that employees operated by opening 1.5 million unauthorized bank accounts and applying for 565,000 unauthorized credit cards in customer’s names. The customers were unaware of this activity. The bank was forced to reimburse $2.6 million in fees that customers were charged. The bank also fired 5,300 employees as a result of it.