Citizens Bank Shares Fall After Discovery of Fake Appointment Data

Employees at Citizens Bank learned the hard way that lying gets nothing accomplished and bosses will likely always find out.

This week, a few branch workers spoke with newspapers about their false information they provided to Citizen Bank about the company’s “Citizens Checkup” program. This program, which seeks to assist customers with financial services and products on a more personal level, was compromised and the bank itself will likely suffer additional losses. As a result of this incident, Citizens Financial Group Inc. dropped an astounding 1.5 percent in the 24-company KBW Bank Index, bringing this year’s total decline to 3.2 percent.

A spokesperson for Citizens issued a statement following this news breaking to the public. She said, “We believe that the program is effectively managed and our data is accurate. Nevertheless, we take every allegation seriously, and we’ll conduct a thorough review.”

While an investors and analysts presentation in January showed a total of 400,000 scheduled appointments for 2016, this news will undoubtedly impact that number, and future trust has likely eroded with the overall brand. At this time, Citizens has not disclosed its plans for reprimanding the employees or how it plans to remedy this issue moving forward.