Wells Fargo’s revenue jumped 9% in its first full quarter free of the Fed’s asset cap

Wells Fargo reported second-quarter 2026 net income of $6.4 billion, or $2.00 per diluted share, on total revenue of $22.6 billion — a 9% increase from a year earlier. Net interest income rose 5% to $12.3 billion, while noninterest income climbed 13% to $10.3 billion, a mix that shows the bank growing both its core lending spread business and its fee-generating activities simultaneously.

The context that makes this quarter notable is regulatory rather than purely financial. The Federal Reserve imposed an unprecedented $1.95 trillion asset cap on Wells Fargo in 2018 following the bank’s sales-practices scandal, barring it from growing its balance sheet beyond that level for seven years. The Fed lifted the cap in June 2025, and in March 2026 it terminated the remaining portions of the related 2018 consent order, closing out the last of the formal enforcement actions tied to the bank’s governance and risk-management failures.

With the ceiling removed, Wells Fargo has been visibly leaning into growth: the bank reported 11% year-over-year loan growth through the first quarter of 2026, a pace that would have been difficult to sustain — or simply impossible — while the asset cap constrained total balance-sheet size regardless of how much lending demand existed. The second quarter’s 9% revenue growth is consistent with a bank now competing on scale terms with peers like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America for the first time in years.

The bigger test ahead is whether Wells Fargo can grow responsibly at the scale its post-cap peers operate at, given that the cap existed specifically because regulators found deep flaws in its risk controls. Clearing the consent order and posting double-digit loan growth are early evidence the bank has repaired both its governance and its growth engine, but sustained performance over several more quarters — not one strong reporting period — is what will determine whether the seven-year regulatory chapter is truly closed in substance as well as on paper.