FDIC warns financial institutions about NSF fees

Bank Regulatory Federal Issues Agency Rule-Making & Guidance FDIC NSF Fees Consumer Finance Supervision FTC Act UDAP Deceptive Risk Management

On August 18, the FDIC issued FIL-40-2022 along with supervisory guidance to warn supervised financial institutions that charging customers multiple non-sufficient funds (NSF) fees on re-presented unpaid transactions may increase regulatory scrutiny and litigation risk. According to the FDIC, some institutions’ disclosures did not fully or clearly describe their re-presentment practices and failed to explain that the same unpaid transaction may result in multiple NSF fees if presented more than once. Failing to disclose “material information to customers about re-presentment and fee practices has the potential to mislead reasonable customers,” the agency said, noting that the material omission of this information is considered to be deceptive pursuant to Section 5 of the FTC Act. Additionally, “there are situations that may also present risk of unfairness if the customer is unable to avoid fees related to re-presented transactions,” the FDIC said.

The supervisory guidance also discussed the agency’s approach for addressing violations of law, noting that it will focus on identifying re-presentment-related issues to ensure correction of deficiencies and remediation to harmed customers. The agency stated that examiners “will generally not cite UDAP violations that have been self-identified and fully corrected prior to the start of a consumer compliance examination,” and noted that it “will consider an institution’s record keeping practices and any challenges an institution may have with retrieving, reviewing, and analyzing re-presentment data, on a case-by-case basis, when evaluating the time period institutions utilized for customer remediation.” However, the FDIC warned that “[f]ailing to provide restitution for harmed customers when data on re-presentments is reasonably available will not be considered full corrective action.” Financial institutions are encouraged to review practices and disclosures related to the charging of NSF fees for re-presented transactions and should consider FDIC risk-mitigation practices to reduce the risk of customer harm and potential violations.