OCC Lifts 2015 Consent Order on Wells Fargo; Street Says Buy

Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) announced that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has terminated the 2015 consent order that involved add-on products which the American multinational financial services company sold to retail banking customers before 2015. Wells Fargo said that it stopped dealing in the products in 2017.

The company seeks to build a risk and control infrastructure appropriate for its size and complexity as a top priority.

“The termination of the 2015 consent order is a step in this work, as the company continues to focus on resolving legacy regulatory issues,” the bank sad in a press release.

This marks the second OCC order that has been terminated under CEO Charlie Scharf, along with one imposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. However, the company still faces a $1.95 trillion asset cap that was imposed by the Federal Reserve, along with several other consent orders.

Wall Street’s Take

After reporting impressive Q4 earnings release on January 14, Wells Fargo attracted ratings from several analysts, making it one of the trending stocks.

Recently, Evercore ISI analyst John Pancari maintained a Buy rating on Wells Fargo with a price target of $65 (18.2% upside potential from current levels).

Pancari said, “While regulatory matters remain a priority and risk persists, we view this risk as manageable and see continued progress on this front. More importantly, we believe the stock can continue to benefit from improving visibility on fundamentals and ongoing investor rotation into highly liquid value-oriented financials.”

Overall, the the Street has a bullish outlook on the stock with a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 14 Buys and 4 Holds. The average Wells Fargo price target of $60.88 implies upside potential of about 10.7%.

News Sentiment

News Sentiment for Wells Fargo is Very Positive based on 108 articles over the past seven days. About 94% of the articles have Bullish sentiment, compared to a sector average of 57%, and 6% have Bearish Sentiment, compared to a sector average of 43%.

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