Capital One Financial Corp — Ethics Grade C-

Capital One Financial Corp receives an overall ethics grade of C- (42/100) on CancelCo's corporate accountability database. Sector: Financial Services. Market cap: Large Cap.

Category scores

• labor: 70
• privacy: 20
• consumer: 35
• environment: 65
• humanRights: 60

Documented incidents (3)

• Massive Data Breach (high, 2019) — A former Amazon Web Services employee exploited a misconfigured firewall to access personal data of over 100 million customers, including Social Security numbers and bank account details. The company agreed to pay $190 million to settle a class-action lawsuit.
• Anti-Money Laundering Failures (high, 2021) — FinCEN penalized the bank for 'willful and negligent' violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, specifically failing to report thousands of suspicious activities. This included millions of dollars moving through businesses linked to organized crime.
• Deceptive Credit Card Marketing (medium, 2012) — The CFPB ordered the bank to refund customers for using deceptive marketing tactics to pressure cardholders into buying low-value add-on services like payment protection and credit monitoring. Call center scripts were found to be intentionally misleading.

Documented good deeds

• Elimination of Overdraft Fees — Capital One became the first major retail bank to completely eliminate all overdraft and non-sufficient funds fees for its customers.

Ethical alternatives

• Aspiration — A neobank that commits to zero fossil fuel investment and plants trees with customer purchases.