Ethical Issues In Bank Of America

Superior Essays
Introduction
Ethics can be defined as the concepts of right or wrong that guide people in a group. Therefore they consist of commonly held beliefs of correct behavior usually for the good of everyone and not just the individual. In organizations, there are a set of rules spelled out in the company’s code of ethics in which behavior should be based upon. The ethics are to be followed by the employees and also govern the behavior towards clients (Lopez & Fornes, 2015). Using the case study of the Bank of America, the report gives a summary of the ethics of the bank and some of the ethical dilemmas the bank has faced in recent times. The
The Bank of America like other agencies has a set of rules that govern the conduct of its employees about
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Therefore, the details shared can be handled with anonymity (Angel, 2016). Hence the employees may not have fear. On the other hand, the services of the bank are tailor-made to the specific needs of the customer. The services include confidentiality of all information of the clients. The bank is careful in following the rules on the customer- personally identifying information.
Nevertheless, the bank complies with the law and all its employees are subject to following the laws and other internal policies. Nonetheless, there has been the instance where the bank was unethical in its operations. For instance, the bank has been alleged to charge interest swaps on small businesses which are a practice meant for large organizations (Angel, 2016). The practice is an unethical behavior as it used a mis-selling tactics which were complex and the product conditional upon the
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The bank employees went ahead to watch the clients file the modifications but derailed the entire process (Lopez & Fornes, 2015). However, the actions of the bank are a contradiction to the terms of repaying loans with the government.
After the cancellation of the loan, the customer would be given an in-house solution to the loan modification which includes a higher interest rate than the one recommended by the government. The new rate would come to 5 percent whereas with the modification it would be at 2 percent. Also, any employees who pointed that the behavior was unethical were fired for nonconformity. One such employee was William Wilson who was fired from the bank’s Charlotte in North California.
Other than the bank 's unethical behavior with the loans, the bank’s employees participated in bond rigging. The case which was investigated for four years concluded that the bank employees had rigged the municipal bids. However, the bank was granted amnesty in return for their agreement to be

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