Wells Fargo's mortgage lending patterns exhibit racial disparities that hurt minority families, multiple activist organizations say.

The mega bank denied Black, Latino and Asian mortgage applicants roughly twice as frequently as white applicants, according to a new study that analyzed almost 25,000 North Carolina mortgage applications and more than 16,000 loans at Wells Fargo between 2020 and 2024.

The bank rejected 22.5% of Black applicants, 25.6% of Latino applicants and 20.3% of Asian applicants, while 10.3% of white applicants were denied. These disparities remained even when adjusted for income, the report said.

"Wells Fargo's pattern of under-serving people and communities of color and its high rejection rates of Black and Latine mortgage applicants is especially troubling as the administration rolls back civil rights and fair lending enforcement," said Ericka Taylor, co-executive director of Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, one of the four organizations that contributed to the report, in a press release Wednesday.

The Consumer Protection Financial Bureau published a final rule Wednesday that will eliminate federal oversight of indirect discrimination known as disparate impact. The rule rewrote Regulation B, which implements the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, to say the act "does not authorize disparate impact claims."

"Today's report underscores just how far away Wells Fargo is from cleaning up its long history of customer abuses. Regulators must immediately investigate this disturbing new evidence of racial disparities in Wells Fargo's mortgage lending," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. "The Trump Administration should be strictly enforcing our fair lending and consumer protection laws so everyone has a fair shot at buying a home or starting a small business – instead of rolling back safeguards that protect borrowers from discrimination."

The report also found denial rates for Black and Latino applicants rose about 20% between 2020 and 2024, increasing from 21.2% and 25% to 25.6% and 29.8%, respectively. During the same period, denial rates for white applicants climbed 11%.

Black adults account for 22.9% of the population in Charlotte, North Carolina's biggest city, yet they make up less than 9% of Wells Fargo's applicants and loan originations. Latino adults found themselves in a similar trend, representing 11% of Charlotte's population but less than 8% of the bank's applicants and loan originations, the report showed.

Wells Fargo took fewer applications and made fewer loans in areas where minorities accounted for a majority of the population as well. People of color made up the majority of the population in 27.3% of North Carolina census tracts, but the bank took just 15.4% of its mortgage applications and made 14.3% of its loans in these areas, the report said.

"The bank's record of racial disparities in its home purchase lending not only undermines people's ability to build wealth and invest in their families' futures, but it also perpetuates the yawning racial wealth gap that is an injustice for these families and for all of us," Taylor said.

Wells Fargo has found itself in a multitude of controversies over the years, some involving race, like when the bank was sued for an alleged bias against Black refinance applicants, and others not, such as a class action complaint surrounding loan-modification issues that was amended for a third time in January.

Wells Fargo did not respond to a request for comment.

"These new findings show that far more accountability is needed and that lifting the asset cap was premature," said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee. "These findings should be investigated ... but unfortunately, the Trump administration is weakening oversight and rolling back the very protections that are supposed to stop discrimination and abuse of consumers."