Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive John Stumpf has stepped down from his role on a Federal Reserve advisory council, the San Francisco Fed announced Thursday.

Mr. Stumpf served as the San Francisco Fed's representative to the council of bankers, which meets four times a year to discuss economic and banking matters with the Fed's board of governors in Washington.

"John made a personal decision to resign as the Twelfth District's representative to the Federal Advisory Council," Wells Fargo spokesman Mark Folk said. "His top priority is leading Wells Fargo."

The embattled chief executive has been under pressure following revelations that thousands of employees created as many as two million of unwanted or fictitious customer accounts.

Lawmakers blasted Mr. Stumpf on Tuesday at a hearing on Capitol Hill over the scandal. In a letter to the San Francisco Fed Thursday, several Democratic senators including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called on the bank's board of directors to reject Mr. Stump's reappointment to the Federal Advisory Council.

"It would be ironic if the Federal Reserve, a key federal banking regulator tasked in part with ensuring the fair and equitable treatment of consumers in financial transactions, continued to receive special insights and recommendations from senior management of a financial institution that just paid a record-breaking fine to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for 'unfair' and 'abusive' practices that placed consumers at financial risk," they wrote.

The San Francisco Fed and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were examining Wells Fargo over its sales culture in 2015. At the time, the regulators wanted to know if the bank had pushed its employees too hard to meet sales quotas and not done enough to prevent questionable behavior.

The OCC was one of the parties, along with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Los Angeles City Attorney, to the regulatory settlement Wells Fargo entered into earlier this month, agreeing to pay a $185 million fine over its sales practices. http://www.wsj.com/articles/wells-fargo-to-pay-185-million-fine-over-account-openings-1473352548

The Federal Advisory Council is made up of 12 senior bankers who meet at least four times a year to advise the central bank's board. Regional Federal Reserve banks choose a person to represent their district on the council. The board currently includes Citigroup's Chief Executive Officer Michael L. Corbat, Eastern Bank CEO Richard E. Holbrook, and Great Western Bancorp Inc.'s CEO Ken Karels.

Write to Kate Davidson at kate.davidson@wsj.com and Shayndi Raice at shayndi.raice@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 22, 2016 18:15 ET (22:15 GMT)

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