Newsroom

May 26, 2016

OCC hits Wells Fargo with $70M penalty

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Wednesday hit Wells Fargo Bank with a $70 million civil money penalty for its previous violations of a mortgage-servicing-related order, which the OCC also terminated that day.

The OCC said it terminated the consent order after determining the bank was now in compliance. The order was originally issued in 2011 and amended in 2013 and 2015.

The penalty was in response to Wells Fargo allegedly failing to correct deficiencies noted in the 2011 order in a timely fashion and violating that order from October 2014 through August 2015. The OCC also alleges Wells Fargo filed payment change notices in bankruptcy court that did not comply with rules and that it made escrow calculation errors that led to incorrect loan modification denials.

The penalty will be paid to the U.S. Treasury.

In related news, CFPB took action against a former Wells Fargo employee this week in response to an alleged illegal mortgage fee-shifting scheme. CFPB ordered the former employee to pay an $85,000 penalty and banned him from working in the mortgage industry for a year.

Wells Fargo in April agreed to pay $1.2 billion and accepted responsibility for failing to report bad loans in the lead-up to the financial crisis that later defaulted and resulted in insurance-claim payouts by the Federal Housing Administration. HUD Secretary Julián Castro said it was the largest settlement recovered by taxpayers for loan violations in the history of the FHA program.

Also, in October, NCUA settled with Wells Fargo for $53 million in response to a lawsuit alleging the bank failed to follow through on its legal duty as a trustee for 27 residential mortgage-backed securities trusts. NAFCU continues to support NCUA's aggressive legal recovery efforts and to urge the agency to be transparent in how and when the funds recovered will be refunded to credit unions.