Four directors will leave Wells Fargo’s board

Wells Fargo on Friday said four board members will soon step down, fulfilling a pledge it made last month as the Federal Reserve penalized the bank for years of misconduct.

The four departing directors are John S. Chen, executive chairman and chief executive of BlackBerry; Lloyd H. Dean, president and chief executive officer of Dignity Health; Enrique Hernandez Jr., chief executive of InterCon Security Systems; and Federico F. Peña, who served as both energy and transportation secretary under President Bill Clinton.

The four directors will leave in April, when the company holds its annual shareholder meeting. Peña, 70, is approaching the board’s mandatory retirement age of 72.

Chen, Dean and Hernandez have served on Wells Fargo’s board for more than a decade.

The departures will reduce the number of directors on Wells Fargo’s board to 12 from 16, although the company is likely to add new directors as it works to diversify its board members’ skills.

Wells Fargo said the departures were part of its regular succession planning, but the company has been under pressure from regulators and some shareholders to speed up the overhaul of its board. Last month, the Federal Reserve criticized the company for ‘‘widespread consumer abuses’’ and governance failures, and forbid it from growing any larger until it shapes up.

The new Fed chairman, Jerome H. Powell, said Thursday that the regulator ‘‘will not lightly lift’’ the restrictions on Wells Fargo. The company should expect to have its growth constrained for a ‘‘significant period,’’ Powell said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.