Consider who was, or will eventually be hurt. Some customers were now paying fees on their new accounts, many without knowing they had a new account. The employees were getting additional pay so they could provide for themselves and their families. The bank was looking like it had more customers on the books.
Here are some of the discussion points you may write about:
Is repayment to customers who paid a fee and the apology by e-mail enough?
Is a penalty appropriate? ($185 million)
Why did Wells Fargo decide to pay incentive fees for opening accounts without putting into place safeguards to assure cheating wouldnt happen?
Would you, if you had been a Wells Fargo employee, been tempted to open bogus accounts to get more pay? If so, would you have succumbed to the temptation?
What could Wells Fargo have done to incentivize employees to get new accounts yet minimizing the possibility that the employees would cheat in such a fashion those clients would be hurt?
Do all of us monitor our bank and credit card statements so carefully that we would know if this had happened to us? Speculate as to whether the employees looked for clients who would be least likely to carefully monitor statements.
