Wells Fargo Lost ‘Tens of Millions’ in Muni and State Deals After Scandal

Wells Fargo & Co. has lost “tens of millions of dollars” in revenue from municipal and state clients since a sales scandal in its consumer bank erupted 10 months ago, Chief Financial Officer John Shrewsberry said.

Shrewsberry said the decline isn’t material to Wells Fargo’s earnings, but added the company is working to regain the business. Ancel Martinez, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based lender, said the lost revenue is expected to be $20 million to $30 million for 2017.

“I don’t want to downplay it,” Shrewsberry said Friday in a telephone interview. “If we’ve irritated those customers, we want to compete and demonstrate to them how we’ve made things better and win their business back.”

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Wells Fargo to reduce businesses following fake account scandal: FT

(Reuters) – Wells Fargo is poised to eliminate a number of its smaller businesses, the company’s chief financial officer said in an article published Sunday.

The Financial Times reported that Wells Fargo will be spinning off a number of its products “worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to CFO John Shrewsberry, in order to focus on and emphasize “more relevant” ones, though he did not specify what products those would be.

“There are a handful of businesses in our mindset,” Shrewsberry said, adding that the bank had “choices to make.” “They’re not at the scale of most of our businesses . . . not top-tier providers.”

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The Department of Labor new rule: Financial advisor trap

ONE OF THE most important investor protections in decades took effect on June 9. The new rule, issued by the Department of Labor, sets in motion a seemingly commonsense requirement that those who advise on retirement investments must put their clients’ interests ahead of their own. Yet it marks a revolution in retirement security, the result of an epic seven-year battle between consumer advocates and the financial industry that sunk millions of dollars into white shoe lobbying firms, industry-sponsored studies, congressional campaign contributions, and major lawsuits in an effort to block the rule.

“Investment advisers shouldn’t be able to steer retirees, workers, small businesses, and others into investments that benefit the advisers at the expense of their clients,” Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis Borzi, who developed the rule, said in 2011. “The consumer’s retirement security must come first.”

The rule, finalized in April 2016, was scheduled to take effect a year later in order to give firms time to comply. It only survived till now thanks to a veto by President Obama of legislation that would have permanently blocked its implementation; Rep. Paul Ryan, who led the charge in Congress, had tarred the rule as “Obamacare for financial planning.”

Since the rule was already final when President Trump took office, it was invulnerable to his day one directive freezing all pending rule making. Nevertheless, within two weeks Trump signed a memo directing the DOL to review the rule and potentially rescind it. In March, before Trump’s labor secretary had even been confirmed, the Department of Labor issued a proposed rule delaying implementation for 60 days — bringing us to June 9 of this year.

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Veteran’s family facing foreclosure claims they’re robo-signing victims

Here we go again…

Sonia Kirkland, 58, says she spends most of her time caring for her mother, who is 104 years old, inside the home on Berkeley Place.

The house is owned by Kirkland’s son, a 34-year-old U.S. Army combat veteran who now works for an international nonprofit group and is serving in Iraq to help rebuild a country devastated by war.

Kirkland says she recently found out that her son had become the victim of “robo-signing” — the controversial practice by banks and other lenders of improperly foreclosing on homeowners by using the robotic signing of documents that deprives them of a fair and legal process.

She says the judge will hear her request for an emergency extension next week

Wells Fargo stuck mortgage borrowers with extra fees, whistle-blower’s lawsuit says

As Wells Fargo & Co. continues to be hit with fallout from its sham-accounts scandal, the bank is facing allegations that it put the screws to customers in yet another way: by slapping them with fees for delays in processing mortgage applications.

A former Wells Fargo mortgage banker who worked in Beverly Hills alleged in a lawsuit this week that the bank falsified records so it could blame holdups on borrowers — and that it fired him for trying to report the practice.

The legal action follows a months-long internal investigation into the alleged abusive practices, one that contributed to an executive shake-up in the San Francisco bank’s mortgage business. ProPublica first reported on the alleged improper fees in January.

When borrowers apply for a mortgage, they are typically guaranteed a set interest rate — assuming the loan is approved within a certain time frame, often 30 to 45 days. If approval takes longer, the borrower can still get the promised rate but there are financing costs associated with extending the guarantee.
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Dimon’s DC rant: It’s almost embarrassing being an American citizen

Here’s Jamie Dimon’s full rant:

Since the Great Recession, which is now 8 years old, we’ve been growing at 1.5 to 2 percent in spite of stupidity and political gridlock. Because the American business sector is powerful and strong, and is going to grow regardless of — people wake up in the morning, they want to feed their kids, they want to buy a home, they want to do things, the same with American businesses — what I’m saying is it would be much stronger growth had we made intelligent decisions and were there not gridlock.

And thank you for pointing it out because I’m going to be a broken record until this gets done. We are unable to build bridges, we’re unable to build airports, our inner city school kids are not graduating.

I was just in France, I was recently in Argentina, I was in Israel, I was in Ireland. We met with the prime minister of India and China. It’s amazing to me that every single one of those countries understands that practical policies to promote business and growth is good for the average citizens of those countries, for jobs and wages, and that somehow this great American free enterprise system, we no longer get it.

Corporate taxation is critical to that, by the way. We’ve been driving capital earnings overseas, which is why there’s $2 trillion overseas benefiting all these other countries and stuff like that. So if we don’t get our act together — we can still grow.

It’s unfortunate, but it’s hurting us, it’s hurting the body politic, it’s hurting the average American that we don’t have these right policies. So no, in spite of gridlock we’ll grow at maybe 1.5 or 2 percent.

I don’t buy the argument that we’re relegated to this forever. We’re not. If this administration can make breakthroughs in taxes and infrastructure, regulatory reform —we have become one of the most bureaucratic, confusing, litigious societies on the planet.

It’s almost an embarrassment being an American citizen traveling around the world and listening to the stupid s— we have to deal with in this country. And at one point we all have to get our act together or we won’t do what we’re supposed to [do] for the average Americans.

And unfortunately people write about this saying like it’s for corporations. It’s not for corporations. Competitive taxes are important for business and business growth, which is important for jobs and wage growth. And honestly we should be ringing that alarm bell, every single one of you, every time you talk to a client.