Wells Fargo Refuses to Stop Using Forced Arbitration
The Fair Arbitration Now coalition strongly denounces Wells Fargo and its CEO, John Stumpf, for refusing to end the bank’s practice of preventing defrauded customers from suing in court. At a hearing held in the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services yesterday, Stumpf stated unequivocally that Wells Fargo will continue to force consumer disputes into secret individual arbitration. The hearing examined Wells Fargo’s massive scheme to fraudulently open accounts in his its customers’ names.
The FAN Coalition is disappointed, but not surprised, that the CEO of a powerful financial institution would publicly champion forced arbitration. In 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a comprehensive study on forced arbitration, which found that it is heavily rigged in favor of financial institutions. Among other things, the CFPB found that in forced arbitration, consumers bringing claims against corporations won only 9 percent of the time. However, when corporations sued their customers, the corporation won in 93 percent of arbitrations. Additionally, arbitration proceedings are completely confidential, which allows which allows corporations like Wells Fargo to hide widespread wrongdoing, as was the case with their fraudulent account cross-selling scheme.
Yesterday, Stumpf was asked by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) whether his bank would continue to invoke forced arbitration clauses buried in the fine print of its customer contracts to prevent customers from holding the bank accountable for its illegal activities. Stumpf refused to end the practice, stating that he “believes in arbitration.” Stumpf previously declined to restore his customers rights last week when asked by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) during a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. At the same Senate hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) stated that the bank’s use of forced arbitration allowed them to cover up their patterns of abusive conduct, noting that “[i]f we had class actions on thisback in 2010, 2009, 2008, then this problem never would have gotten so out of hand.”.
The CFPB recently proposed a rule to restore consumers’ right to join together in class actions. More than 280 consumer, civil rights, and small business advocacy groups and over 100,000 individuals commended the CFPB for taking this crucial step to limit big banks’ and other financial companies’ efforts to escape accountability for breaking the law, and urged the agency to use the full force of its authority to restore consumers’ right to choose how to resolve disputes with financial institutions.