The former chair and board member say that as the bank pushes forward to regain trust, they want to move on.

Wells Fargo, which has changed its leadership over the past year to overcome a fake accounts scandal, announced yesterday that its chair, Elizabeth A Duke, had resigned after taking on the role in January 2018. Another board member has also stepped down.

Duke had been vice chair from October 2016 through December 2017 and had a number of committee roles at the US lender.

James Quigley also resigned from the board, Wells Fargo said in a statement. The resignations were effective from March 8.

Both Quigley and Duke were reportedly scheduled (source: NPR, March 9, others) to appear before the House Financial Services Committee tomorrow. Reports said it wasn't immediately clear if they are still expected to testify. 

In February, California-based Wells Fargo agreed to pay $3 billion to settle charges of taking fees for bank accounts and other services from customers who hadn’t asked for them or had needed. The saga cast a harsh light on the kind of aggressive sales tactics at that bank over a period of time. In 2016 it was ordered to pay $185 million in fines and penalties after investigators found that Wells Fargo employees opened as many as 2 million unauthorized accounts without customer authorization. 

The bank yesterday said that Charles H Noski will serve as chair. Noski, who joined the board in June 2019, is a retired vice chairman and former chief financial officer of Bank of America.

CEO Charlie Scharf said, “On behalf of Wells Fargo and all of its employees, I would like to thank Betsy [Duke] and Jim for the contributions they have made over the past several years. They have helped the board navigate significant challenges relating to the sales practices issues, and they began the hard work of instituting necessary changes in leadership, governance, compensation programs and our business model that form the foundation on which we are continuing to rebuild the trust we’ve lost. We wish them the best.”

Duke and Quigley said: “Since we were made aware of the egregious harms suffered by Wells Fargo’s customers, we were and remain fiercely determined to do right by them and to strengthen the bank’s culture and controls. We have made these our top priorities. In addition, we hired new external leadership with the ability to be an effective change-agent, which we found with our CEO, Charlie Scharf.”

“As the markets face increasing volatility, a strong Wells Fargo is needed now more than ever. Out of continued loyalty to Wells Fargo and ongoing commitment to serve our customers and employees, we recommended to our colleagues on the board that we step down from our leadership roles and they have accepted our resignation from the board. We believe that our decision will facilitate the bank’s and the new CEO’s ability to turn the page and avoid distraction that could impede the bank’s future progress.”