Finance

Wells CFO: Consumers 'should be mad,' but we're committed to changing

Wells Fargo CFO: Can't put a number on potential litigation costs
VIDEO10:0510:05
Wells Fargo CFO: Can't put a number on potential litigation costs

Consumers "should be mad" but Wells Fargo is "committed to fixing" the problems of its sales scandal, Chief Financial Officer John Shrewsberry said Friday.

Customers who have suffered from the scandal "should be mad. We absolutely had something in our system that was broken, and we're committed to fixing it," he said on CNBC's "Closing Bell."

Wells Fargo reported third-quarter earnings that edged out expectations Friday, two days after John Stumpf abruptly retired as CEO in the aftermath of the bank's phony accounts scandal. The quarterly report was the first since the bank paid $185 million in penalties in September for opening roughly 2 million consumer deposit and credit card accounts without customer authorization as far back as 2011.

"There's no way to put a number on it ... We'll grapple with it, we'll address each of these (legal issues) as it comes through," Shrewsberry said.

He also told CNBC that he is not giving back bonuses he has earned. Shrewsberry has been CFO since 2014.

In a supplementary presentation, the bank said that "mortgage referrals from retail banking were down 24 percent in September from August."

Stumpf retired as chairman and CEO on Wednesday, but not all analysts are convinced that the ascension of well-liked Tim Sloan to CEO role will be enough to restore confidence in the bank.

"They need to go outside the company," Rafferty Capital Markets bank analyst Dick Bove told CNBC.com. "They need to steal somebody from JPMorgan. I don't think Tim Sloan is the right guy for the job."

Wells Fargo still faces a number of ongoing investigations by regulators, as well as private lawsuits.

—CNBC.com's Jeff Cox contributed to this report.