Wells Fargo clears another consent order, now down to three

Wells Fargo has checked more boxes in its progress toward fixing its once-scandal-laden consumer businesses, announcing Monday afternoon that it’s shed another consent order.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency terminated a 2021 action related to loss mitigation practices in the bank’s home lending business, marking the fifth regulatory item Wells has been freed from in 2025. The $1.9 trillion-asset bank is still operating under three other consent orders, including the asset-cap shackles the Federal Reserve imposed on it in 2018.

Analysts have said that the rapid headway in clearing consent orders this year could be indicative of hurdling the Fed’s asset cap. Wells CEO Charlie Scharf said in a prepared statement Monday that the bank is confident it will close its remaining enforcement actions.

“We are pleased that the OCC has again validated our work and terminated this consent order in just three and a half years,” Scharf said. “This timeframe is much improved from other historical orders, including two 2011 Federal Reserve orders which were terminated earlier this year.”

The 2021 action required the bank to fix its home lending loss mitigation program, which relates to how it deals with homeowners who are delinquent on their mortgages. Under the order, Wells was barred from acquiring third-party residential mortgage servicing or transferring borrowers out of its loan servicing portfolio until remediation had been provided.

The consent order had followed up on a prior OCC action from 2018 that addressed similar problems at the bank. In 2021, Wells was hit with a $250 million civil money penalty for what the OCC called “unsafe or unsound practices related to deficiencies in its home lending loss mitigation program” and violations of the 2018 order.

Back in 2018, Wells disclosed in a securities filing that it had discovered a calculation error in its foreclosure process, leading to loan modification denials for more than 600 customers, roughly 400 of whom lost their homes. It later amended the numbers upward, saying that 870 borrowers were incorrectly denied modifications and that foreclosures were completed in roughly 545 of those cases.

Regulators have now closed 11 consent orders with Wells since 2019, but the progress hasn’t been entirely linear. The bank entered into a formal agreement with the OCC in September 2024 that flagged “deficiencies” in Wells’ anti-money-laundering program.

In February, the bank was released from a six-year-old consent order with the OCC related to its compliance risk management program regarding auto lending and mortgage practices. The OCC’s 2018 order was accompanied by a $500 million fine, and came in coordination with a consent order from the CFPB. The CFPB order remains outstanding.

Earlier last month, Wells also cleared a pair of orders from the Fed that dated back to 2011 and related to deficiencies in its mortgage lending practices. And in January, the bank was freed from a 2022 consent order with the CFPB.

Scharf, who came to Wells in 2019 to help get the bank’s compliance back on track, said in a prepared statement last month that the recent spate of consent order terminations represented a “huge accomplishment.”

“We are a different company today than when the new management team arrived,” Scharf said at the time.