Wells Fargo extinguished another regulatory punishment after an important US regulator ended a 2015 order against the bank, leaving it with a major obstacle to overcome before being able to leave behind a series of scandals.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) ended the agreements related to the financial subsidiaries previously maintained by Wells Fargo, the bank said in a statement on Thursday. It was the 13th Consent Order ended by bank regulators since 2019, Wells Fargo said.
This leaves only one last important sanction – an order of consent issued by the Federal Reserve in February 2018, along with an asset limit that prevents Wells Fargo from expanding its asset size beyond the 2017 level, which was $ 1.95 trillion.
The Fed imposed the asset limit after a series of bank -related scandals that began to emerge in 2016.
The order ended on Thursday is related to previous inspections in which the examiners found that the bank and some of its affiliates did not fulfill all the requirements to have participation in financial subsidiaries, according to OCC documents of the time.
Subsequent written agreements issued by OCC against Wells Fargo prohibited the bank from acquiring control or maintaining participation in new financial subsidiaries – or starting a new activity in existing – without OCC writing approval.
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San Francisco’s Wells Fargo believes it is quite advanced on the way to meet the requirements for the Fed to finally end the asset limit that has been weighing on the bank for over seven years, CEO Charlie Scharf said at an investor conference on Wednesday.
Wells Fargo is also under a formal agreement signed in 2024 with OCC, referring to deficiencies in compliance with the rules to combat money laundering.
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