Wells Fargo & the Continuing Sliming of our Industry

I cannot begin to express my extreme frustration at the news reports about Wells Fargo abusing its customers with unethical practices centered around incentive compensation.  The LBA has made an effort to talk about ethics with bankers and the media.  This summer in visits with the media we have opened the meeting by speaking about ethics and financial literacy and then segue into regulatory relief.   We met with New Orleans City Business on August 25 with three local bankers.  Shortly after this meeting the Wells Fargo story hit, and they did an article on ‘ethical selling’ by banks and had one of the bankers in our meeting as part of the article.  It’s very hard to overcome the negative volume in the media on a story like Wells Fargo, but what the LBA can try and do is have credibility with local media and when a story is done, we get a fair chance to have our say.  In January of this year, the American Banker published my article "Banks Can Use ‘Code of Ethics’ to Strengthen Public Trust".  The Code of Ethics adopted by Louisiana bankers at the 1928 LBA convention gave me a good way to bring some attention to this vital issue.