American Express shares fell after the Wall Street Journal reported that the investigative arms of three US financial agencies were investigating the card issuer’s sales practices.
Shares of the company fell 1.3% on Thursday, after falling 5% earlier.
The offices of the Federal Reserve’s inspectors general, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corps are examining whether New York-based AmEx pushed its cards at customers of small companies with deceptive tactics and whether customers were injured, according to the Journal.
Citing current employees or former employees of the issuer, the Journal reported in March that in an effort to increase sales, some AmEx employees misrepresented card rewards and fees or issued cards that customers did not look for.
AmEx said in a statement on Thursday that it has “robust and effective compliance policies and controls in place. [does] does not tolerate deviations. “The company added that it cooperated with the regulatory review of small business card practices that took place in 2015 and 2016.
“We conducted a detailed and independent review of these sales over this time period and found no evidence of a pattern of misleading sales practices,” AmEx said. “The commercial purchasing group responsible for these sales accounted for approximately 0.25% of the total of 65 million new cards purchased by American Express worldwide between 2014 and 2019. We take these issues seriously and will continue to cooperate with our authorities. regulation. ”