Timothy Sloan

Timothy J. Sloan
Born	Timothy John Sloan
Nationality	American
Occupation	Banking executive
Title	Chief Executive Officer (2016–2019)
Employer	Wells Fargo & Company (1987–2019)
Known for	Former CEO and President of Wells Fargo & Company

Timothy John Sloan is an American banking executive who served as the chief executive officer of Wells Fargo & Company, one of the largest financial institutions in the United States, from October 2016 until his abrupt resignation in March 2019. A career Wells Fargo employee who spent more than three decades at the bank, Sloan rose through the ranks of the company's finance and wholesale banking divisions before being elevated to the top position in the wake of the bank's widespread fake accounts scandal. His tenure as CEO was defined by efforts to reform the bank's internal culture and restore public trust, though those efforts were met with intense scrutiny from federal regulators, members of Congress, and consumer advocacy groups who questioned whether an insider could effectively lead the institution through its deepest crisis. Sloan's departure in 2019 marked a pivotal moment in Wells Fargo's ongoing struggle to move beyond a series of consumer financial scandals, and his post-departure legal dispute with the bank over tens of millions of dollars in deferred compensation drew further public attention to the complexities of executive accountability in the aftermath of corporate misconduct.

Career

Early Career at Wells Fargo

Timothy Sloan joined Wells Fargo in 1987 and built his entire professional career within the institution, spending more than three decades at the bank in progressively senior roles. Over the course of his career at the bank, Sloan held leadership positions across multiple divisions, including roles in the company's finance operations and its wholesale banking unit. His long tenure at Wells Fargo gave him extensive familiarity with the bank's operations, corporate structure, and institutional culture — qualities that would later be cited both as strengths and as potential liabilities when he assumed the role of chief executive.

Prior to becoming CEO, Sloan served as the bank's president and chief operating officer, positions that placed him at the center of the company's strategic and operational decision-making. His deep institutional knowledge was a key factor in the Wells Fargo board of directors' decision to elevate him to the top leadership position during one of the most turbulent periods in the bank's history.

Appointment as CEO

In October 2016, Sloan was elected chief executive officer of Wells Fargo & Company and joined as a member of the company's board of directors. His appointment came in the immediate aftermath of the resignation of his predecessor, John Stumpf, who had stepped down amid mounting pressure from regulators, lawmakers, and the public over a scandal in which Wells Fargo employees had created millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts in customers' names in order to meet aggressive sales targets.

The fake accounts scandal, which had been publicly revealed in September 2016 following enforcement actions by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Los Angeles City Attorney, represented one of the largest consumer banking scandals in recent American history. Wells Fargo was fined $185 million as part of an initial settlement, and subsequent investigations revealed that the scope of the misconduct was even broader than initially reported, encompassing unauthorized accounts, improper insurance charges, and other abuses across multiple business lines.

Sloan's selection as the new CEO was, from the outset, a subject of debate. Proponents of the choice argued that his deep knowledge of the bank's operations made him well-suited to identify and address systemic problems. Critics, however, questioned whether a long-tenured insider who had served in senior leadership positions during the period when the misconduct occurred could bring the independent perspective necessary to fundamentally reform the institution's culture and practices.

Tenure as CEO

During his time as chief executive, Sloan undertook a series of measures intended to reform Wells Fargo's internal practices and restore confidence among regulators, customers, and shareholders. These efforts included changes to the bank's sales practices, modifications to employee compensation structures designed to reduce the incentive for misconduct, and public commitments to cultural transformation within the organization.

Despite these efforts, Sloan's tenure was marked by continued revelations of additional misconduct across the bank's various business units. The scope of the scandals expanded beyond the original fake accounts issue to encompass problems in the bank's auto lending, mortgage, and wealth management divisions, among others. Federal regulators maintained intense oversight of the bank throughout this period.

In February 2018, the Federal Reserve took the unprecedented step of imposing an asset cap on Wells Fargo, preventing the bank from growing its balance sheet beyond its size at the end of 2017 until the Fed was satisfied that the bank had sufficiently improved its governance and risk management practices. The asset cap represented one of the most severe regulatory sanctions ever imposed on a major American bank and served as a persistent signal that regulators did not believe the bank's reform efforts under Sloan's leadership were proceeding quickly enough.

Sloan appeared before congressional committees on multiple occasions to answer questions about the bank's progress in addressing its problems. In March 2019, he testified before the House Financial Services Committee, where he faced pointed questioning from members of Congress who expressed skepticism about the pace and depth of the bank's reforms. The hearing underscored the degree to which lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle remained dissatisfied with Wells Fargo's response to its scandals.

Resignation

On March 28, 2019, Wells Fargo announced that Timothy Sloan would step down as chief executive officer, effective immediately. The departure was characterized by the bank and by news reports as abrupt, coming just weeks after his contentious appearance before the House Financial Services Committee.

In announcing the resignation, Wells Fargo's board of directors stated that the decision had been made in the best interests of the company. The board indicated that it would seek an external candidate for the CEO position — a decision that represented an implicit acknowledgment that the strategy of appointing an insider to lead the bank's turnaround had not achieved the desired results with regulators or the public.

Sloan's departure was widely covered in the financial press and was viewed as a significant moment in Wells Fargo's post-scandal trajectory. NPR reported that Sloan was stepping down "in the wake of consumer financial scandals" that had plagued the bank for years. The New York Times described him as "the embattled chief executive" who resigned as the bank "struggles to recover."

The bank ultimately hired Charles Scharf, an external candidate with prior experience at JPMorgan Chase, BNY Mellon, and Visa, as Sloan's successor in September 2019.

Post-Departure Legal Dispute

Following his departure from Wells Fargo, Sloan became involved in a legal dispute with his former employer over deferred compensation he claimed was owed to him. In December 2023, The New York Times reported that Sloan was seeking additional money from the bank, describing him as "a C.E.O. who resigned in scandal" who "now wants more money."

Sloan filed a lawsuit claiming that Wells Fargo owed him approximately $34 million in compensation that had been deferred or withheld following his resignation. The dispute centered on the terms of his departure and the extent to which the bank was entitled to withhold compensation from an executive who had led the institution during a period of significant regulatory and public criticism.

Wells Fargo contested the lawsuit and, in April 2024, asked a California state court to dismiss Sloan's claims. The bank argued that it had legitimate grounds for withholding the compensation in question. The legal proceedings highlighted broader questions about executive compensation practices, clawback provisions, and the accountability of corporate leaders in the aftermath of institutional misconduct.

The Charlotte Observer reported that Wells Fargo's legal filings laid out the bank's position on why the court should "toss out" the $34 million lawsuit, underscoring the adversarial nature of the post-employment relationship between Sloan and the institution he had led for more than two years.

Wells Fargo Scandals: Context

The scandals that defined Sloan's tenure at the helm of Wells Fargo represented a significant chapter in the history of American banking regulation and corporate governance. The fake accounts scandal, which first came to widespread public attention in 2016, involved the creation of millions of unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts by bank employees who were under pressure to meet aggressive cross-selling targets. The misconduct affected millions of customers and resulted in billions of dollars in fines, penalties, and settlements.

Under Sloan's leadership, the bank continued to face consequences for the breadth of misconduct that had been uncovered. In addition to the Federal Reserve's asset cap, Wells Fargo faced enforcement actions from multiple federal and state agencies, consent orders requiring specific remedial actions, and extensive litigation from affected customers, employees, and shareholders.

One notable example of the ongoing financial consequences came years after Sloan's departure. In November 2025, the USA Herald reported that Wells Fargo had agreed to pay $84 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit related to the alleged misuse of 401(k) dividends in employee benefit plans. While this particular settlement addressed conduct that extended beyond the period of Sloan's leadership, it illustrated the long tail of legal and financial consequences stemming from the institution's governance failures during the period in which he served in senior roles.

The cumulative impact of the scandals on Wells Fargo was substantial. The bank's reputation suffered significant damage, its stock price underperformed relative to peers for an extended period, and the Federal Reserve's asset cap remained in place for years after Sloan's departure, constraining the bank's ability to grow. The episode also prompted broader regulatory and legislative discussions about incentive structures in large financial institutions, the effectiveness of internal compliance mechanisms, and the responsibilities of senior executives for misconduct occurring within organizations they lead.

Legacy

Timothy Sloan's career and tenure as CEO of Wells Fargo occupy a complex position in the history of American banking. As a career employee who rose to the top of one of the nation's largest financial institutions, his trajectory illustrated both the potential rewards of institutional loyalty and the challenges that can arise when insiders are called upon to lead fundamental transformations of the organizations in which they have spent their careers.

His appointment as CEO following the fake accounts scandal tested the proposition that an executive with deep institutional knowledge could more effectively identify and address systemic problems than an outsider. The ultimate outcome — his resignation under pressure after roughly two and a half years in the role, followed by the board's decision to hire an external successor — suggested that, in this case, the demands of regulators and the public for a break with the bank's past leadership outweighed the perceived benefits of continuity and institutional expertise.

The post-departure legal dispute between Sloan and Wells Fargo added an additional dimension to his legacy, raising questions about the extent to which executives should be held financially accountable for institutional failures that occurred during their leadership, even when those executives were not personally found to have engaged in misconduct. The $34 million compensation dispute became a case study in the tensions between contractual obligations to departing executives and the growing expectations — from regulators, shareholders, and the public — that executive compensation should be tied to institutional performance and conduct.

The Wells Fargo scandals more broadly prompted significant changes in how regulators approached the oversight of large financial institutions, including greater scrutiny of corporate culture, sales practices, and incentive structures. The Federal Reserve's asset cap on Wells Fargo, imposed during Sloan's tenure, represented a novel regulatory tool that signaled a willingness by regulators to impose direct constraints on the growth of institutions that had not adequately addressed governance failures.

Sloan's experience also contributed to ongoing discussions in the corporate governance community about the merits and drawbacks of promoting internal candidates to lead organizations through periods of crisis, as opposed to bringing in external leaders who may be perceived as better positioned to effect fundamental change.