Wells Fargo new clients slide 31%

NEW YORK — Wells Fargo & Co said retail customers opened 31 per cent fewer checking accounts in January than a year earlier in the wake of a settlement with regulators over fraudulent sales.

Customers submitted 47 per cent fewer applications for credit cards, the worst year-over-year decline since October, the San Francisco-based lender said in a statement. January marks the fifth consecutive month that new accounts and credit-card applications have fallen.

Wells Fargo began releasing data about retail-banking performance following the September 8 revelation that employees opened as many as two million deposit and credit-card accounts over about a half decade without customers’ permission. Chief executive officer Tim Sloan is seeking to move the bank past the scandal with advertising campaigns and a new compensation plan for retail bankers that removes sales goals that encouraged workers to open fake accounts.

The firm’s board will probably decide to withhold 2016 bonuses from some top executives including Sloan and chief financial officer John Shrewsberry as a way to hold managers accountable for the retail bank’s performance, a person with knowledge of the matter said last week. Denying the bonuses isn’t meant to reflect findings of specific wrongdoing, the person said.

January’s results reversed strides the bank had made in reducing account closings during November and December. Customers shuttered one per cent more accounts in January than in December, and four per cent more than a year earlier. The 47 per cent decline in credit-card applications last month was the worst since October, when applications dropped 50 per cent.