Last week’s letter to Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf from Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, and Ron Wyden, D-OR, comes in addition to a Thursday letter from 11 senators asking the leaders of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to review the San Francisco-based bank’s mortgage refinance lending to ensure it complies with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and the Fair Housing Act.
That Thursday letter noted the CFPB found 70% of Black applicants across the mortgage lending industry were approved in 2020, a 17-percentage-point gap under the 87% approval rate for non-Hispanic whites. Hispanic applicants saw 78% approval, according to the bureau.
