Prudential made a deal with Wells Fargo. Wells could issue "a low-cost life insurance policy to the bank's retail customers." Wells Fargo issued the policies on Prudential paper. These policies, called "MyTerm" policies, were basically "ROI" policies, or insurance for the Return on Investment.
When the story broke of 5,000 employees at Wells Fargo somehow setting up fake accounts for Wells' customers in order to get sales credits for the sales quotas set at Wells, Prudential decided to investigate these "ROI" policies issued by Wells in Prudential's name.
Guess what they found?
"'This definitely was the same kind of [alleged] conduct that Wells was committing, but through Prudential,'" said one of three whistle-blowers, "an attorney and former co-head of Prudential's corporate investigations division[.]" Turns out that Wells Fargo employees could get sales credits good toward their sales quotas at Wells by issuing fake 'Prudential' MyTerm life insurance policies in the names of Wells' customers to cover the Return on Investment of the nonexistent accounts. See Stacy Cowley and Matthew Goldstein, "Accusations of Fraud at Wells Fargo Spread to Sham Insurance Policies" (New York Times Online, posted on December 9, 2016), at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/business/dealbook/wells-fargo-accusations-sham-insurance-policies.html.
Lessons learned. Some would say, though, that they already knew what there is to learn from this particular lesson.
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