Wells Fargo Faces Persistent Racial Gap in Mortgage Refinancing

Wells Fargo & Co., which approved fewer than half of mortgage refinancings sought by Black homeowners in 2020, prompting calls for regulatory investigations, greenlighted a larger share of applications from such borrowers last year.

But the gap between the bank’s approval rates of Black and White applicants in the second year of a $5 trillion pandemic refinancing boom remained greater than that of any other major lender, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of new federal mortgage data.

Wells Fargo accepted 58% of Black homeowners who completed applications for refinancing conventional home mortgages, compared with 47% of Black applicants ...