Wells Fargo Details Refunds to Certain Mortgage Customers
October 04 2017 - 10:54AM
Dow Jones News
By Emily Glazer
Wells Fargo & Co. said Wednesday it is refunding certain
customers who may have wrongfully paid fees for mortgage lock
extensions. The bank gave additional details on its plans after
Chief Executive Timothy Sloan mentioned the refunds during a
congressional hearing Tuesday.
The San Francisco-based bank said it would reach out to all home
lending customers who paid fees for so-called mortgage rate lock
extensions from September 16, 2013 through February 28, 2017,
around 110,000 customers, and refund those who believe they
shouldn't have paid those fees.
Wells Fargo said it expects the first refunds will go out by the
end of the year. Customers in the time frame the bank examined paid
a total of $98 million in fees, and the bank said it expects
refunds to be lower than that total since "a substantial number of
those fees were appropriately charged."
Over the summer the bank disclosed in a quarterly securities
filing that it was reviewing policies and procedures around
mortgage rate lock extension fees following media reports on the
matter. It also disclosed that the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau was investigating the situation.
Wells Fargo said in Wednesday's press release the decision to
issue refunds followed an internal review that found its policy
implemented in September 2013 wasn't consistent and sometimes
customers were charged fees when the bank was responsible for
delays that necessitated the extensions. The bank changed its
policy in March 2017.
Before September 2013 the bank didn't have a written policy
regarding those fees and it usually voluntarily elected to cover
most of the costs for reasons including internal production delays,
a person familiar with the matter said.
Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 04, 2017 10:39 ET (14:39 GMT)
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