SAN FRANCISCO--(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.
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