Dive Brief:

• House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-CA, said her panel will request testimony from Wells Fargo’s board regarding the bank’s sales scandal.

• "We’re going to get some of their board members up here, and see what kind of responsibilities their board members are taking for the management of Wells Fargo," Waters told Reuters on Thursday. "We’re going to have hearings, absolutely."

• The nation’s fourth-largest bank has been under scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators since 2016, when Wells Fargo employees were found to have created roughly 3.5 million fake accounts to receive sales-based incentives. 

Dive Insight:

The San Francisco-based bank’s executives have faced Congress in the past, but if Waters' request is fulfilled, it would be the first time the bank’s board members would face the committee, Reuters reported.

Waters told American Banker she would request that the bank’s new CEO, Charlie Scharf, appear alongside board members.

"While they are not involved in the day-to-day operations, they are involved in the direction and should know how things are operating," Waters said of the bank's board. "So we are going to be bringing in at least a few of the board members."

Wells Fargo did not respond to Banking Dive’s request for comment. 

Wells Fargo’s scandal-plagued track record also includes shady practices in its auto insurance, mortgage and wealth management divisions. A bank policy, revealed in August, allowed Wells Fargo accounts to remain open even after customers thought they had closed them, causing some customers to be charged thousands of dollars in overdraft fees​.

The bank’s practices have drawn fire from lawmakers and resulted in repercussions from regulators in recent years.​

Rep. Katie Porter, D-CA, asked Wells Fargo to repay customers "hundreds of millions of dollars" in service fees it "deceptively collected" from 2013 to 2018. Wells Fargo responded the following week, saying it would begin issuing refunds in 2020.​

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, a 2020 presidential contender, called on then-Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf to resign during a Senate Banking Committee hearing in 2016. He stepped down a month later.

The bank has been operating under an asset cap set by the Federal Reserve since February 2018. In response to Wells Fargo's "consumer abuses and compliance breakdowns," the Fed announced it would restrict the bank's growth until it "sufficiently improves its governance and controls." The bank is not allowed to hold total assets above the $1.93 trillion it had at the end of 2017.

Wells Fargo is also facing federal probes by the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor.