Wells Fargo Financial Responds to Activist Group Charges

Allegations of irresponsible lending against Wells Fargo Financial, orchestrated by an activist group called Acorn, are "deliberate attempts to distort and misrepresent our business practices and procedures," according to Mark Oman, group EVP of Home and Consumer Finance Group for Wells Fargo & Company. Although Wells Fargo has not yet seen the lawsuit announced today, Oman said the group has taken facts about Wells Fargo Financial's customer relationships out of context in order to paint a false and misleading picture of the relationships. He said the allegations "are false and totally contrary to our ethical standards and business practices." To put this subject in context, he said, "Wells Fargo the past three years has originated more than $1 trillion in mortgages and during that time our non-prime lending was less than three percent of our mortgage lending and less than four percent of our industry's total sub-prime lending."