Our mission to make business better is fueled by readers like you. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
In the 16 months since he took on the toughest job on Wall Street, Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf has been badgered by analysts, investors, and journalists alike over one dominating issue: when would the Federal Reserve lift the $1.95 trillion asset cap imposed on the bank as punishment for its flagrant scandals of the past decade?
Ever since the Fed levied the unprecedented asset cap in February 2018, it has functioned as the most severe and burdensome of the regulatory penalties that plague Wells Fargo to this day—a legacy of the institutional failures at the bank that led to widespread cases of fraud across multiple business lines, and which have resulted in billions of dollars in fines.
On a practical level, the asset cap has handicapped Wells Fargo’s ability to grow its business. It has limited the amount of loans the bank is able to carry on its books at a time when historically low interest rates have prompted competitors to ramp up their loan volumes, leaving Wells at a disadvantage to rivals like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America. With the bank’s financial performance suffering as a result and its stock price lagging behind its peers, it was no surprise when Scharf underlined resolving Wells’ outstanding regulatory issues as “clearly the first priority” upon taking the reins in October 2019.
To the frustration of observers hoping to get a read on where those efforts stood, Scharf and his company have been exceptionally tight-lipped on the status of Wells’ regulatory regimen, citing legally binding confidentiality constraints. “I wish I could share with you the specifics of what the plan is,” Scharf told analysts on the bank’s most recent earnings call last month. “I can’t do that, and ultimately, it’s up to the [Federal Reserve Board] anyway. I’m just not in a position to put a timeframe around it.”
Wednesday, however, brought the clearest indications to date about the status of the painstaking, meticulous task of getting Wells back in the good graces of its regulators. According to a Bloomberg report, officials at the Fed have privately signaled that they will accept Wells’ proposed overhaul of its risk management and governance structures, after Scharf and his team reportedly submitted a plan, spanning thousands of pages, to regulators in September.
The overhaul would reform the very internal systems that so failed the bank as it slipped into scandal after scandal in the last decade, many of them involving sales practices that abused the trust of customers and often veered into outright fraud. Scharf has already taken notable measures to bolster oversight within the sprawling, 260,000-person firm, unveiling an “enhanced” risk management structure last spring that placed dedicated chief risk officers at each of the bank’s five divisions.
Still, it appears that much work remains to be done. The Fed’s acceptance of Wells’ proposal is only one in a series of steps required before the regulator would withdraw the asset cap, according to Bloomberg; the bank still needs to fully implement the plans outlined and undergo a months-long, third-party review to ensure they’ve been properly adopted, before eventually requiring the full Federal Reserve Board’s approval to lift the cap. Some Wells Fargo executives have privately indicated that the bank won’t escape the asset cap until “late this year at the earliest,” per Bloomberg, while Fed officials have noted that the process could extend into “2022 or beyond.”
Still, that didn’t stop investors from flashing their enthusiasm at Wednesday’s news; Wells Fargo shares climbed nearly 8% in the morning’s trading and ended the day up more than 5%, hitting their highest levels in nearly a year. The company’s stock has climbed steadily since November, with sentiment improving as Scharf’s vision for Wells Fargo’s future has gradually come into focus.
While a spokesperson for Wells Fargo declined to comment on the Bloomberg report, the bank said that it remains “focused on doing the work” needed to finally ease the regulatory burdens that have hindered it over the past three years. “The Federal Reserve will determine when the work to fulfill the requirements of the consent order is done to their satisfaction,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
In the meantime, Wells and its investors can at least take some solace in the Fed’s reported thumbs-up. For the first time in a while, there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel for America’s most beleaguered financial institution.
