The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency terminated its 2018 consent order against Wells Fargo on 18 February 2025, confirming the closure of an enforcement action that had targeted deficiencies in the bank's compliance risk management programme. The termination is the tenth consent order Wells Fargo has had lifted since 2019, reflecting a years-long remediation effort that the bank has undertaken across multiple regulatory fronts simultaneously as it seeks to satisfy an array of supervisory obligations inherited from a period of widespread consumer protection failures.
The 2018 OCC order was one of several enforcement actions imposed on Wells Fargo following a series of widely publicised consumer protection failures that drew scrutiny from Congress and regulators across the federal system. Addressing the flaws in its compliance risk management infrastructure has been among the most complex elements of the bank's rehabilitation programme, requiring sustained investment in governance, controls, and oversight functions across business lines that span retail banking, mortgage servicing, and commercial financial services.
FOUR ORDERS FROM THREE REGULATORS REMAIN
Despite the latest closure, Wells Fargo retains four outstanding consent orders imposed by three separate regulators. One order remains in place from the Federal Reserve, one from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and two from the OCC itself. Each remaining order addresses distinct areas of conduct or operational weakness, meaning the bank's path to full regulatory clearance requires parallel remediation workstreams rather than a single unified effort.
The Federal Reserve's order, which includes an asset cap that restricts the size of Wells Fargo's balance sheet, has been the most prominent of the remaining constraints and has drawn sustained attention from analysts and investors monitoring the bank's capacity for growth. The OCC and CFPB orders cover different areas and operate independently of the Federal Reserve's restriction, but together they represent a substantial ongoing supervisory presence across the bank's operations.
Banking Dive reported the termination on 18 February 2025, noting that Wells Fargo confirmed the closure through its newsroom. The steady pace of consent order closures — ten since 2019 — indicates that the bank has made demonstrable progress in satisfying regulators across a range of compliance and risk management domains, even as the most consequential restrictions remain in force and continue to define the outer boundaries of the bank's strategic flexibility.
REMEDIATION PROGRESS ACROSS COMPLIANCE DOMAINS
Each of the ten closures since 2019 has followed a determination by the relevant regulator that Wells Fargo had addressed the specific deficiencies identified in the original order, a process that typically involves independent audits, examinations, and sustained periods of demonstrated compliance. Closing ten orders across that period reflects a structured, sequential approach to remediation rather than a single comprehensive settlement, and it has required the bank to maintain significant compliance investment over multiple years.
For the bank, every closed order reduces the direct supervisory burden and narrows the scope of mandatory reporting and compliance activity. The four remaining orders, however, mean that Wells Fargo continues to operate under significant regulatory oversight and must maintain the same level of remediation discipline that has produced the closures to date. Analysts and observers will be watching for any further announcements from the Federal Reserve, CFPB, or OCC regarding the status of the outstanding actions.