The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has terminated its 2022 consent order against Wells Fargo related to automobile lending, consumer deposit accounts, and mortgage lending. The bank announced the termination on Tuesday, January 28, 2025, marking the seventh consent order closed by Wells Fargo’s regulators since 2019. The consent order, which was announced in December 2022, included a $3.7 billion fine and required Wells Fargo to end the practice of surprise overdraft fees or fees for deposit accounts when the consumer had available funds at the time of a purchase or other debit transaction, but then subsequently had a negative balance once the transaction settled.
The order settled a case in which the CFPB alleged that the bank committed a series of illegal acts, including illegally assessed fees and interest charges on loans, wrongful car repossessions, and unlawful overdraft fees.
Cfpb terminates consent order
In the release, Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said, “As we have said before, we and our regulators have identified a series of unacceptable practices that we have been working systematically to change and provide customer remediation where warranted.
This far-reaching agreement is an important milestone in our work to transform Wells Fargo’s operating practices and resolve these issues.
The CFPB’s consent order was terminated two weeks after Scharf said, during an earnings call, that Wells Fargo would continue to invest in building the right risk and control infrastructure.
This follows the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) terminating a consent order in early 2024, the sixth consent order terminated by Wells Fargo’s regulators since Scharf joined the bank. Scharf said during the January 15 earnings call, “Early last year, the OCC terminated a consent order it issued in 2016 regarding sales practices.
“The closure of this order was an important milestone and is a confirmation that we operate much differently today,” said Scharf