LOS ANGELES _ Wells Fargo & Co. said Friday its third-quarter profit slipped 3 percent from a year earlier as the banking giant began trying to recover from a scandal surrounding its sales practices.
The bank's net income in the three months ending Sept. 30 fell to $5.6 billion, or $1.03 a share, from $5.8 billion, or $1.05 a share, a year earlier.
Wells Fargo has been in crisis since Sept. 8, when the San Francisco-based bank reached a $185 million settlement with regulators over its aggressive sales efforts. Wells Fargo employees were found to have created as many as 2 million accounts in customers' names without their consent, aggressive cross-selling tactics first uncovered by the Los Angeles Times in 2013.
John Stumpf, the company's chairman and chief executive, resigned Wednesday under heavy criticism from investors and politicians, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who called for Stumpf to be criminally investigated.
Stumpf was replaced by Timothy Sloan, the bank's president and a longtime Wells Fargo employee.
During a conference call with analysts Friday, Sloan opened his remarks by saying "my immediate and highest priority is to restore trust in Wells Fargo."
"We let down our customers, our shareholders and our team members. We had serious problems in our retail bank, where products became the focus rather than the relationships with our customers."
Nonetheless, Sloan said, "I couldn't be more proud of our financial performance in the third quarter."
Wells Fargo said its third-quarter revenue edged up 2 percent to $22.3 billion from $21.9 billion a year earlier.
But third-quarter profit at Wells Fargo's community banking division, which includes the division responsible for the sales problems, fell 9 percent from a year earlier to $3.23 billion.
There also were signs that consumers were backing away from the bank. In September, openings of consumer checking accounts tumbled 30 percent from August and were down 25 percent from a year earlier. Applications for credit cards also fell sharply.
The third-quarter results were released before the markets opened Friday. In early trading, Wells Fargo's stock fell 31 cents to $44.44 a share.
Sloan noted that Wells Fargo's board of directors has commissioned an independent study of the sales practices but said he did not know when that probe would be completed or whether its results would be made public.
Nonetheless, Sloan said a key lesson from the scandal was that the bank was too slow to recognize and fix its problems.
"When I think about the retail sales practices issues we've had at the company, I wish that the business had escalated the issue sooner" to Wells Fargo's top management, Sloan said.
"I wish when the business escalated the issue that _ while the senior management did a lot in response _ I wish we could have done more," he said. "We've got to escalate issues, wherever they occur within the company, sooner."
Wells Fargo said it has fired about 5,300 workers for improper sales practices since 2011. When one analyst asked if Wells Fargo might consider bonuses or some other way of saying "we're sorry" to its remaining employees who had been "put through the wringer," Sloan replied: "Saying we put our team members through the wringer is an understatement."
Sloan said that while "we offer a very competitive set of compensation and benefits" for workers, "all ideas are on the table" to retain and attract employees.
The same is true about whether Wells Fargo might offer a cut in fees or other discounts to keep customers and attract new ones, Sloan said. But he added that "I would not expect us to lead with price" because Wells Fargo's strategy is "building that lifelong relationship (with customers) that's not based on price."
