Wells Fargo New Accounts Dip Downward In February

The hemorrhaging of cash and accounts from Wells Fargo & Co WFC has slowed since last September, when federal officials announced that bank employee had opened up to 2 million fake accounts without the knowledge of customers, according to new data from the company.

“In February, we were pleased to see that in general our existing customers continued to actively use their accounts and valued their relationships with Wells Fargo,” said Tim Sloan, who was named president and chief executive officer of disgraced bank after the scandal broke.

Progress Report

New consumer checking accounts were down 3 percent in February from the previous month and down 43 percent from the same period last year. The company said checking account closures were down 10 percent from January and 11 percent from the same period last year.

Primary consumer checking account customers were pegged at 23.5 million, up “modestly” from the previous month and up 1.9 percent from the previous year. Average consumer and small business deposit balances were down slight from January and up 6 percent from the year-ago period.

“After factoring in day count differences, February trends were generally similar to January’s and were within our expectations,” said Mary Mack, head of Community Banking.

Branch banking’s decline was offset just slight by online banking increase of 1 percent from the year-ago period.

Wells Fargo was fined $100 million for its banking violations. Salmon, in an interview with SFGate last week, said the full scope of the damage done by the scandal still was unknown.

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