In the latest shake-up in its executive ranks, Wells Fargo said Friday that it fired the head of its consumer lending unit, effective immediately.
Franklin Codel, based in Des Moines, Iowa, was terminated for "acting in a manner that was contrary to the company's policies and expectations of its senior leaders during a communication he had with a former team member," Wells said in a statement.
Codel was dismissed after a discussion with a former employee about that employee's termination, Wells Fargo spokesman Tom Goyda said. The employee worked in Codel's consumer lending unit. The company declined to provide further details.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Codel was fired after he made disparaging remarks about regulators to a previously terminated senior employee. The former employee reported the comments to the bank, which informed regulators, the newspaper said.
The San Francisco-based bank said the reasons for the dismissal did not involve consumer lending operations, the servicing of its customers or its financial results. The termination was also not connected to a sales scandal that erupted last fall in the bank's retail banking unit, the bank said. That scandal, however, has put the company under intense scrutiny from its regulators.
Codel, who joined Wells Fargo in 1993, had been one of the 10 top executives beneath CEO Tim Sloan, and his departure adds to recent turnover in the company's upper ranks. Wells promoted Codel to head of consumer lending in October 2016, putting him in charge of the home lending business that he already oversaw as well as auto lending, personal lending and student lending.
Friday's announcement is another black eye for a bank that is still trying to recover from the sales scandal that emerged in September 2016. In that matter, the bank agreed to pay $185 million in penalties to settle allegations that its employees created more than 2 million unauthorized customer accounts to meet aggressive sales goals.
The scandal led to the departure of CEO John Stumpf and community banking head Carrie Tolstedt. It also spurred congressional hearings and ongoing federal and state investigations.
Meanwhile, Codel's consumer lending unit has also faced its own troubles, starting this summer.
In July, Codel issued an apology after Wells said as many as 570,000 customers may have been charged premiums for auto insurance they did not need, a practice that in some cases may have also contributed to vehicle repossessions. Wells said customer remediation was expected to total about $80 million.
