Wells Fargo has promoted its home lending head, Kristy Fercho, to lead the San Francisco bank's diversity and inclusion efforts. She will also sit on the operating committee of the bank.
Fercho, who's run the bank's home lending division since August 2020, is staying in her current position while Wells Fargo finds her replacement. But she's transitioning to her new role as head of Wells' diverse segments, representation and inclusion division, and she's joining the $1.9 trillion-asset bank's operating committee immediately.
She will report to Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf, who set up the division in 2020 and elevated the role to report to him. A company spokesperson said Fercho is the first Black woman executive to report directly to a Wells chief executive.
Scharf said Fercho's experience running business lines "puts her in a unique position to make our DE&I work even more central to how we operate as a company and to drive positive outcomes for our employees and communities." Before she joined Wells Fargo in 2020, Fercho was president of Flagstar Bank's mortgage division.
Fercho
Her promotion comes as the home lending division undergoes a series of changes.
Like other mortgage lenders, Wells Fargo's division has
Scharf has said Wells Fargo will make its existing customers its primary focus rather than being more proactive in finding new mortgage customers. Bloomberg News reported in August the pullback
Fercho is replacing Kleber Santos,
Wells Fargo's home lending division has long faced scrutiny from regulators, with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Democratic lawmakers have also
The company also faced criticism after The New York Times
After briefly pausing those guidelines and undertaking a review, Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo has said the guidelines have helped the company see "measurable increases in diverse representation."
In a quarterly filing for investors Monday, Wells Fargo said the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission "have undertaken formal or informal inquiries or investigations regarding the Company's hiring practices related to diversity."