Americans Think Wells CEO Should Take Sen. Warren’s Advice

The people have spoken, and when it comes to Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, it seems the people are in agreement with Senator Elizabeth Warren.

According to a recent poll by SurveyMonkey, 86 percent of respondents said that Wells’ CEO ought to resign in light of the recent revelations of questionable activities going on within the bank — activities that ended with 2 million accounts opened for customers without their knowledge. The survey also indicates that 71 percent of Americans now find Wells Fargo to be an untrustworthy bank while 80 percent said they would consider closing their accounts were they Wells Fargo customers. (It is unclear how many, if any, of the 571 people surveyed for this poll are actually Wells Fargo customers already).

These results come after weeks of controversy about the account fraud scandal — which has already seen the bank fined $185 million by the CFPB and the Office of the Comptroller of Currency and seen Stumpf before the Senate banking committee explaining just how things went so wrong for so long. During that hearing, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley both said the executive should resign or be fired.

“You should resign, you should give back the money you made while this scam was going on, and you should be criminally investigated by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Warren said.

Stumpf, for now, has offered no plans to step down, though he did resign from the Federal Advisory Council, which advises the Federal Reserve. Additionally, the CEO isn’t facing pressure (that we know of) from the bank’s largest shareholder, Warren Buffett, who said he would not comment on the situation until after the election in November.

SurveyMonkey said the survey was of a “proprietary online panel” that is representative of the US population.