Wells Fargo Personal Loans: 2024 Review

Wells Fargo offers unsecured personal loans to existing customers. The loans have minimal fees and come in a wide range of amounts and repayment terms, so borrowers can customize the loans to fit their needs.

The loans are available in all 50 states, and you can pre-qualify online with a soft credit check to view your loan offers.

The lender also offers a separate small-dollar loan called the Flex Loan that's available to pre-approved customers in the Wells Fargo mobile app.

» MORE: Best bank loans

Table of Contents

Wells Fargo personal loans at a glance

Where Wells Fargo personal loans stand out and fall short

Wells Fargo personal loan customer reviews

Do you qualify for a Wells Fargo personal loan?

How to apply for a Wells Fargo personal loan

Compare Wells Fargo to other lenders

How we rate Wells Fargo personal loans

Wells Fargo personal loans at a glance

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Where Wells Fargo personal loans stand out

Soft credit check to pre-qualify: Wells Fargo lets customers pre-qualify with no hard credit check before applying for a personal loan. By pre-qualifying, borrowers can preview loan terms, including their potential interest rate.

Wide range of repayment terms: Borrowers can choose from a number of repayment terms. For loans under $5,000, one- to three-year terms are available. For loans of $5,000 or more, borrowers can make payments for up to seven years. Combined with the lender’s large loan amounts, these extended repayment terms make Wells Fargo one of the best banks for a home improvement loan.

» COMPARE: Best home improvement loans

Relationship discount: Wells Fargo customers can qualify for a relationship discount, which lowers the amount of interest they pay, by setting up automatic payments from a qualified Wells Fargo checking account. The type of checking account will determine the discount, which ranges from 0.25 to 0.5 percentage point, according to Wells Fargo’s website.

Flexible payment dates: Before signing a loan agreement, borrowers can choose their payment date, and once the loan begins, they can change their payment date once every 12 months. This is a useful feature if your pay schedule ever changes or if you take on a new expense that changes your monthly cash flow.

Where Wells Fargo personal loans fall short

No direct payment to creditors: If you want to use a Wells Fargo personal loan to consolidate debts, like paying off your credit cards, the lender won’t send the loan funds to your creditors for you. Though this isn’t a must-have for a debt consolidation loan, it’s a nice perk that other lenders offer.

» MORE: Best debt consolidation loans

No co-sign or joint loans: Wells Fargo only offers single-applicant personal loans. If you want to add a co-signer to your application or apply for a joint loan, you’ll need to look elsewhere. Co-signed and joint loans can make it easier for lower-credit borrowers to get approved since the lender considers both applicants' creditworthiness as part of the application.

» MORE: Lenders that offer co-signed personal loans

Loans available to existing customers only. Wells Fargo only provides personal loans to customers who have had an eligible bank account open for at least a year. Some other banks require borrowers to have existing accounts, but none have a 12-month relationship requirement.

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Wells Fargo personal loan customer reviews

As of September, 2024, Wells Fargo Bank has 1.6 stars on Trustpilot, a website that collects consumer reviews. The rating encompasses customer reviews from many products the bank offers, including bank accounts and mortgages. Customer service is a focus of many negative reviews on the site.

The lender’s mobile app received 4 8 stars across 2.5 million reviews on Google Play and 4.9 stars across 9.2 million reviews on the Apple App Store.

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Do you qualify for a Wells Fargo personal loan?

Wells Fargo doesn't publicly disclose many of its borrower requirements. The bank only provides personal loans to current banking clients, so you’ll need to have a bank account for at least 12 months to be eligible to apply for a loan.

In 2023 and the first half of 2024, most of Wells Fargo’s approved consumer loan applicants had a credit score of 700 or higher, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This means most consumers will need good or excellent credit to qualify for a Wells Fargo personal loan.

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How to apply for a Wells Fargo personal loan

Here are the steps to apply for a Wells Fargo loan.

1. Pre-qualify on Wells Fargo’s website. You can log in to your Wells Fargo account or manually fill out the lender’s short application, which includes questions like how much you want to borrow and what the funds are for. The lender may ask for information about your income and employment before you can preview loan offers. There’s no hard credit pull at this stage.

2. Preview loan offers and accept the one that fits your budget. Once you accept a loan offer, you’ll submit a formal personal loan application. This could require more documents, like W-2s, pay stubs and bank statements to confirm the information you gave during pre-qualification. Wells Fargo will also do a hard credit check when you apply, so your credit score could temporarily dip.

3. Stay on top of your loan payments. Wells Fargo reports payments to the three main credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion), so on-time payments will help build your credit score, but missed payments will hurt it. Setting up automatic payments and keeping an eye on your budget are two ways to manage your loan payments.

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Compare Wells Fargo to other lenders

Personal loan lenders offer different rates, loan amounts and special features, so it pays to weigh your options. The best personal loan is usually the one with the lowest APR.

LightStream and SoFi offer similar loan amounts and features to Wells Fargo, but they don’t require you to have a pre-existing relationship to get a personal loan.

LightStream

» MORE: Read our review of LightStream

SoFi

» MORE: Read our review of SoFi

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How we rate Wells Fargo personal loans

NerdWallet writers rate lenders against a rubric that changes each year based on how personal loan products evolve. Here’s what we prioritized this year:

• Category definitions

  Affordability (25%)

  An affordable loan has low rates and fees compared to other similar loans and may offer rate discounts.

  Customer experience (20%)

  A good customer experience includes allowing borrowers to choose and change their repayment date, a fully online application process, a mobile app to manage the loan and a customer service team with wide availability.

  Underwriting and eligibility (20%)

  The lender reviews borrowers’ credit reports and credit history and tries to understand their ability to repay a loan. It offers loans in most states and doesn’t restrict eligibility by requiring a pre-existing relationship.

  Application process (20%)

  Borrowers can pre-qualify to check their potential rate, loan amount, repayment term and APR without affecting their credit score. They can easily find answers to questions about the personal loan on the lender’s website. The application process is fast enough to allow funding within a couple of days or less.

  Loan flexibility (15%)

  A flexible loan is one that offers a wide range of loan amounts and repayment term options. It includes common features like additional loan types and direct payment to creditors on debt consolidation loans.

  Discretionary

  A lender’s star rating can be reduced if the lender is sued by a state or federal regulator for unfair consumer practices or has been accused by a reputable source of suspicious business practices.

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