Wells Fargo, once the No. 1 player in lending out mortgages, announced it was taking a step back from its previous goal of reaching as many Americans as possible. Instead, it will now focus on home loans for existing bank and wealth management customers — and borrowers in minority communities.
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“We are making the decision to continue to reduce risk in the mortgage business by reducing its size and narrowing its focus,” Kleber Santos, CEO of Consumer Lending said in a press release.
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“We will continue to expand our programs to reach more customers in underserved communities by leveraging our strong partnerships with the National Urban League, Unidos US and other non-profit organizations,” Kristy Fercho, head of Home Lending and head of Diverse Segments, Representation and Inclusion at Wells Fargo, added. “We also will hire additional mortgage consultants in communities of color.”
The press release highlighted that $150 million will also be used to serve minority communities looking to refinance or buy a home, “helping more black and hispanic families achieve homeownership.”
Home lending is no longer the cash cow it once was. A sharp rise in interest rates has put the brakes on refinancing activity and sapped demand for new loans. Wells Fargo originated just $21.5bn in mortgages in the third quarter, a 59 per cent drop from the previous year. Overall, revenue from mortgage banking during the quarter fell by more than 80 per cent to $212mn.
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Shares in the bank are down nearly a quarter over the past 12 months. Bar Citigroup, which has its own regulatory problems, Wells Fargo trails its Wall Street peers on every measure — from price-to-book value to return on equity. This is despite boasting a common equity tier-one capital ratio of 10.3 per cent — over 100 bps above its regulatory minimum.
Well, the minimum equity ratio is way too low as it stands. There is little incentive for banks to be careful as they have little of their own money at risk.
WF has been stupid about refinancing for a long time. I once had one of their mortgages but. will not deal with them again - too stupid to breathe.
It makes sense that Greece and Italy would be more inclined to think a powerful cabal was behind the major world events as both countries were threatened by the EU to vote for an EU preferred technocrat or the EU would just override the vote. Ditto the former Soviet Bloc countries. I wonder when the West is going wake up and smell the fraud. We do not have personal autonomy as we have been told. We are subjects no different than Winston in 1984.
If this had happened only a few years ago before the ability to sequence genetic material had been invented, all anyone would have noticed is that the world had a couple of years of hardly unprecedented bad flu which accelerated the demise of some of the very old and those with pre-existing serious medical problems. But fortunately, that bad flu caused very little mortality among the young & those of working age.
Putting on my tinfoil hat, my guess is that it is impossible at this point to distinguish mortality due to the virus variant du jour from mortality due to the mandatory genetic treatments mischaracterized as “vaccines”. Too much money and too many political reputations at stake to have much confidence in the data.
On the other hand, we can be sure that the rulers of China are delighted about the success of their economic attack on the West. Someone should write a book – say, “While England Slept”, or something like that.
In a similar vein, the bracket programming is defective if automated or, if not automated someone is asleep at the switch. As the #2 team, doesn’t SF automatically will host the other “Division Round” game (Philadelphia automatically hosts one after a bye this week)?
