Wells Fargo Risk Officer Loughlin to Depart After Bank Scandals

(Bloomberg) -- Michael Loughlin, who has been Wells Fargo & Co.’s chief risk officer through its recent spate of scandals, is retiring.

Loughlin, 62, who joined the San Francisco-based lender in 1986, will remain in the job for a few months until a successor is named, Wells Fargo said Wednesday in a statement. He’s been the company’s top executive overseeing risk since 2010, including most of the period when bank employees were opening millions of unauthorized customer accounts to meet sales goals.

A direct report to Chief Executive Officer Tim Sloan, he was among those named in a 113-page report commissioned by the bank’s board last year, which characterized the actions of more than a dozen other top executives and subordinates who saw warnings signs, ran operations where abuses flourished or tried to raise alarms. While the board found he didn’t have authority to enforce changes, Loughlin wrote in 2013 that he should have pushed the head of the community bank to do more about sales problems.

Loughlin was one of eight senior executives who had some pay withheld last year as the bank’s board sought to hold managers accountable for the sales scandal. Even so, he was given additional responsibilities in recent months ensuring employees complied with new bank rules.

Before becoming chief risk officer, he oversaw credit approval, policy and reporting for the wholesale division, and held senior roles in wealth management, corporate banking and operations.

To contact the reporter on this story: Laura J. Keller in New York at lkeller22@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Steven Crabill, Dan Reichl

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