Wells Fargo cut hundreds more mortgage employees Thursday, the latest in a series of reductions across the industry after higher interest rates brought the pandemic-era home-lending boom to halt.

A blueprint for a shared ledger for digital money would include central bank digital currencies, bank deposits and e-money from companies like PayPal — but not unsupervised cryptocurrencies.

The regulator's demand in confidential talks to settle a series of investigations into mistreatment of customers, described by people with direct knowledge of the matter, reflects its escalating frustration with the bank, which has been punished multiple times by authorities over the past six years for a variety of abuses.

Kristy Fercho, who's run the bank's home lending division since August 2020, will report directly to CEO Charlie Scharf and sit on the operating committee. Last year, she became the first Black person to chair the Mortgage Bankers Association, and she took the top spot in American Banker's Most Powerful Women to Watch this year.

Wells Fargo, which set aside $2 billion last quarter to deal with legal matters, said it's in discussions with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to resolve investigations.

The bank is using Google Assistant technology to power its virtual assistant, Fargo, according to Michelle Moore, head of digital at Wells.

Wells Fargo set aside an additional $2 billion to resolve a variety of legacy regulatory and legal woes as Chief Executive Charlie Scharf continues wrestling with the costly fallout from scandals he was hired to resolve.

At American Banker's Small Biz Banking conference, bankers said they are throwing community events, working with local nonprofits and trying to turn lending decisions from "no" to "yes."

Kara McShane took over as head of the commercial real estate team at Wells Fargo at an inauspicious time: February 2020, when COVID-19 was heading toward pandemic status and offices were starting to empty out.