Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational financial services company. The company operates in 35 countries and serves more than 70 million customers worldwide. It is a systemically important financial institution according to the Financial Stability Board, and is considered one of the "Big Four Banks" in the United States, alongside JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup.
The company's primary subsidiary is Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., a national bank that designates its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, site as its main office (and therefore is treated by most U.S. federal courts as a citizen of South Dakota). It is the fourth-largest bank in the United States by total assets and is also one of the largest as ranked by bank deposits and market capitalization. It has 8,050 branches and 13,000 automated teller machines and 2,000 stand-alone mortgage branches. It is the second-largest retail mortgage originator in the United States, originating one out of every four home loans, and services $1.8 trillion in home mortgages, one of the largest servicing portfolios in the U.S. It is one of the most valuable bank brands. Wells Fargo is ranked 47th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest companies in the U.S.
In addition to banking, the company provides equipment financing via subsidiaries including Wells Fargo Rail and provides investment management and stockbrokerage services. A key part of Wells Fargo's business strategy is cross-selling, the practice of encouraging existing customers to buy additional banking services. This led to the Wells Fargo cross-selling scandal.
The company has been the subject of several investigations by regulators. In February 2018, Wells Fargo account fraud scandal erupted when the Federal Reserve barred the bank from growing its nearly $2 trillion asset base any further, until the company resolved its internal issues to its satisfaction. In September 2021, Wells Fargo incurred further fines from the U.S. DOJ, charging fraudulent behavior by the bank against foreign-exchange currency trading customers. Bloomberg Businessweek reported in March 2022 that Wells Fargo was the only major lender in 2020 to reject more home refinancing applications from Black applicants than it approved.
Wells Fargo has international offices in London, Dublin, Paris, Milan, Dubai, Singapore, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, and Toronto, among others. Back-offices are in India and the Philippines with more than 20,000 staff. Notably, Wells Fargo is the first major national U.S. bank to undergo a successful unionization drive. As of 2024, 20 branch locations have joined Wells Fargo Workers United-CWA, a division of Communications Workers of America, in less than a year.
Wells Fargo operates under Charter No. 1, the first national bank charter issued in the United States. This charter was issued to First National Bank of Philadelphia on June 20, 1863, by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Wells Fargo, in its present form, is a result of a merger between the original Wells Fargo & Company and Minneapolis-based Norwest Corporation in 1998. The merged company took the better-known Wells Fargo name and moved to Wells Fargo's hub in San Francisco. At the same time, Norwest's banking subsidiary merged with Wells Fargo's Sioux Falls-based banking subsidiary. Wells Fargo became a coast-to-coast bank with the 2008 acquisition of Charlotte-based Wachovia.
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