After intense questioning of its CEO Tuesday at the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs full committee hearing titled “Wells Fargo: One Year Later,” Wells Fargo announced [1] it will be reaching out to all home lending customers from September 16, 2013, through February 28, 2017, who paid fees for mortgage rate lock extension requests.
According to the release, Wells Fargo already stated that they would be reviewing past policies and procedures for situations such as the above mentioned and again stated the plan at Tuesday’s hearing.
“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,” Sloan said.
The rate lock extension policy in place in September 2013 was said by Wells Fargo to be not consistently applied at times and resulted in some borrowers being charged fees when it was the company primarily at fault for the delay that made the extensions necessary. On March 1, 2017, the company changed how it manages the mortgage rate lock extension process to alleviate this problem and ensure consistency through the use of a review team that will review all requests and apply Wells Fargo’s policy.
Wells Fargo expects the first customer communications and refunds to go out in Q4 2017.
“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 release stated.
Due to the fact that not all fees assessed were paid and some have already been refunded, Wells Fargo anticipates the amount refunded to likely be lower.