Bloomberg, March 17, 2022, Wells Fargo Pressed by Senators on Race Disparity in Refinancing
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown and other Democratic senators called on Thursday for regulators to investigate Wells Fargo & Co.’s treatment of Black homeowners seeking to refinance mortgages during the pandemic.
In a separate letter to Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf, senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, demanded the bank produce by March 28 data and algorithms used to evaluate applicants and cited what they called “potentially illegal discrimination.”
The letters follow publication last week of a Bloomberg News investigation that found Wells Fargo had in 2020 approved only 47% of applications to refinance mortgages completed by Black homeowners compared with 72% of those from White applicants. The bank’s approval rate for Black applicants was the lowest among major lenders, the Bloomberg analysis of federal mortgage data found.
