Senate Democrats are demanding more information from U.S. Bank about the account-opening activity that led to the settlement order with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, as well as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), sent a letter to Andrew Cecere, CEO of U.S. Bank, requesting information about the bank’s use of consumer data to open accounts not authorized by consumers.
“It is unacceptable that U.S. Bank provided incentives to and pressured its employees to take advantage of their unique access to a veritable treasure trove of sensitive, personal information to sign up unsuspecting customers for fee-generating financial products and services,” the senators wrote.
The letter maintains that the CFPB’s consent order tells a “problematic story” of the bank incentivizing its employees to increase profits “to the detriment of its own customers.”
The senators compare the activities of U.S. Bank to that of Wells Fargo, which was previously fined $3 billion by the Securities and Exchange Commission, $100 million by the CFPB, $35 million by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and $50 million by the City and County of Los Angeles, after it was discovered that Wells Fargo had been engaging in the same type of activity.
“Troublingly, this is the second time in less than a decade where the federal government has sought accountability and redress by a major bank for perpetuating this practice,” the senators wrote.