Wells Fargo has made changes to its plan to fix the damage caused by over two million acts of fraud, whereby employees who had high sales goals and incentives opened new, unauthorized accounts using existing customer information.
The bank initially said it would get rid of the sales goals by Jan 1. According to CNN, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf will tell Congress on Thursday that those goals will be dropped effective Oct 1 – three months ahead of schedule.
Stumpf said this is in an effort to focus on customer service over sales.
Wells Fargo also announced that executives will face consequences. The company came under scrutiny when it fired 5,300 low-level employees, but corporate leaders remained unscathed.
Stumpf will work for free during the investigation of the bank’s sales practices and will lose most of his 2016 salary, which includes his $41 million in stock awards and his bonus.
The executive in charge of the division that created the fake accounts, Carrie Tolstedt, was scheduled to retire at the end of the year and has left the company ahead of schedule. She will not receive a bonus or severance and will forfeit all of her $19 million in unvested stock awards. It has also been said that she has agreed to not exercise some $34 million in stock options.
Executives could face further penalties based on the results of the investigation.