I fully believe that the former CEO didn’t actually know what was going on and was just looking at top line metrics. You have this in many companies, not the fraud part, but the mantra to be succcessful at whatever cost. In this instance, that permutated down to the branch workers who were incentivized to skirt the rules & meet the metrics set.

Kinda feels like the housing market when loan officers were paid a ridiculous amount for variable interest housing loans versus fixed loans. The banks and everyone were buying them up as that was their top line metrics but ignored how it was actually happening.

I hold the CEO and other top executives there for staying ignorant but I agree, this made minimal money for WF so I don’t think it was the true intent of the CEO to have this happen but they should’ve looked into how markets with not large enough populations had so many accounts. They didn’t and deserve the punishment.