When the chief executive of Wells Fargo, Charles W. Scharf, appeared before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, the committee’s chairwoman opened with an ominous warning: The last two Wells Fargo chiefs to face Capitol Hill inquisitions resigned soon after.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Scharf tried to put distance between himself and his predecessors.

Denouncing the company’s “flawed business model” and “broken” culture, Mr. Scharf acknowledged that the bank’s efforts to reform itself had been stumbling and incomplete — and said that was changing.

“The sense of urgency that people are working with inside the company is very different today than it was four months ago,” he said.

That’s when Mr. Scharf became the latest person in charge of fixing the mess that is Wells Fargo, which has made little progress righting itself in the nearly four years since a series of scandals began bursting into view. Employees had opened what may have been millions of sham accounts in customers’ names, charged mortgage customers unnecessary fees and forced auto loan borrowers to buy insurance they did not need.