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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wells-fargo-fine-20180409-story.html
Wells Fargo & Co. could face fines of several hundred million dollars from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for the bank's mortgage-lending and auto-insurance abuses.
The agency is in talks with the San Francisco bank over penalties for the problems, Reuters reported Monday, citing two unnamed people with knowledge of the discussions. CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney is pushing for fines as large as $1 billion, Reuters said.
A CFPB spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2016, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $185 million to settle investigations by the CFPB, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer into the creation of millions of unauthorized accounts.
The $100 million CFPB portion of the settlement was a record for the agency, which began operations in 2011. Reuters reported Monday that Mulvaney, who was installed as acting director by Trump in November, is looking for a penalty against Wells Fargo that would dwarf that earlier figure.
The bank did not admit any wrongdoing but said its employees had opened millions of checking, savings and credit card accounts that customers never authorized. Wells Fargo sales practices were first reported by the Los Angeles Times in 2013 and were traced to onerous sales goals.
Wells Fargo also has been accused of forcing auto-loan customers into unneeded insurance policies and charging improper fees to some mortgage borrowers.
The Times reported last year on a wrongful-termination lawsuit by a former Wells Fargo mortgage banker who alleged that the bank falsified records so it could blame mortgage-processing holdups on borrowers. The banker said Wells Fargo fired him for trying to report the practice.
Accusations of improper mortgage fees also have been the subject of a class-action lawsuit, and the bank reported in August that the consumer bureau was investigating the matter. Wells Fargo has acknowledged that the controversy was a factor in a shake-up of the bank's mortgage division.
In October, Wells Fargo announced that it would refund "rate-lock extension" fees to some mortgage borrowers whose delays in completing mortgage applications were primarily the bank's fault. The fees in question were charged from Sept. 16, 2013, through Feb. 28, 2017.
The fees are supposed to be charged only when borrowers fail to finish their paperwork on time and want to retain the interest rate that initially was quoted for the loan.
Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with brokerage and investment bank Cowen & Co., wrote in a research note Monday that Wells Fargo remains at risk for regulatory action because of its reported abuses.
"We have warned for many months that Wells Fargo was not in the clear over its various consumer account controversies, including the most recent allegations over auto lending and mortgage lending," he wrote. "To us, the bank remains the ideal target for those on the far right and far left who believe the biggest banks are too large to manage."'
Shares of Wells Fargo were up 64 cents, or less than 1%, to $52.86 in afternoon trading.
jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com