Wells Fargo Announces Plan to Refund Customers for Mortgage Rate Lock Extension Fees
October 04 2017 - 9:04AM
Business Wire
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) today announced plans to
reach out to all home lending customers who paid fees for mortgage
rate lock extensions requested from Sept. 16, 2013, through Feb.
28, 2017, and to refund customers who believe they shouldn’t have
paid those fees. The company previously disclosed that it was
reviewing past policies and procedures regarding the circumstances
in which mortgage rate lock extension fees were assessed to
customers, and Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan mentioned the refund plans
during an appearance Tuesday, Oct. 3, before the U.S. Senate
Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
In making today’s announcement, Sloan said, “We want to serve
our customers as they would expect to be served, and are initiating
these refunds as part of our ongoing efforts to rebuild trust.”
The plan to issue refunds follows an internal review that
determined a rate lock extension policy implemented in September
2013 was, at times, not consistently applied, resulting in some
borrowers being charged fees in cases where the company was
primarily responsible for the delays that made the extensions
necessary. Effective March 1, 2017, Wells Fargo changed how the
company manages the mortgage rate lock extension process to ensure
more consistency by establishing a centralized review team that
reviews all rate lock extension requests for consistent application
of policy.
The company anticipates that the first customer communications
and refunds will go out in the final quarter of this year. A total
of approximately $98 million in rate lock extension fees were
assessed to about 110,000 borrowers during the period in question,
although the company believes a substantial number of those fees
were appropriately charged under its policy. The amount ultimately
refunded likely will be lower, as not all of the fees assessed were
actually paid and some fees already have been refunded.
About Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a diversified,
community-based financial services company with $1.9 trillion in
assets. Wells Fargo’s vision is to satisfy our customers’ financial
needs and help them succeed financially. Founded in 1852 and
headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking,
insurance, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial
finance through more than 8,500 locations, 13,000 ATMs, the
internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 42
countries and territories to support customers who conduct business
in the global economy. With approximately 271,000 team members,
Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States.
Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 25 on Fortune’s 2017
rankings of America’s largest corporations. News, insights and
perspectives from Wells Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo
Stories.
Cautionary Statement About Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements about our
future financial performance and business. Because forward-looking
statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions
regarding the future, they are subject to inherent risks and
uncertainties. Do not unduly rely on forward-looking statements as
actual results could differ materially from expectations.
Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made, and we
do not undertake to update them to reflect changes or events that
occur after that date. For information about factors that could
cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations,
refer to our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission, including the discussion under “Risk Factors” in our
Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, as
filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on
its website at www.sec.gov.
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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171004005767/en/
MediaTom Goyda, 314-875-8222orInvestorsJohn
Campbell, 415-396-0523
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