Regulators decline Wells Fargo’s strategy to repay insurance customers

Repayment of insurance customers stopped - Stop Sign

American regulators have rejected the bank’s repayment plan to borrowers who were unfairly sold coverage.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (O.C.C.) has rejected Wells Fargo’s plan to repay its insurance customers. Those borrowers were overcharged by the bank when they were sold unnecessary auto insurance. The O.C.C. has not yet implemented a deadline by which a plan must be approved. That said, Wells Fargo is unable to complete the effort of compensating its affected customers until it receives the regulator’s nod.

Regulators told Wells Fargo it must do more to ensure the thorough compensation of every affected driver.

The O.C.C. rejected this plan for compensating the insurance customers because it said the bank hasn’t done enough. The regulators insist that Wells Fargo must do more to make certain that every one of the affected auto insurance policyholders has been identified and adequately compensated for the costs and hardships they suffered, as reported by Reuters.

Wells Fargo shared their plan with regulators in June. This was a requirement of the bank’s settlement with the O.C.C. as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (C.F.P.B.). That settlement was agreed upon in April 2018. The O.C.C. reviewed this plan, which is expected to affect approximately 600,000 drivers. Upon completing the review, the O.C.C. informed the bank that it needed more assurances that every affected auto loan customer would be found and repaid.

Wells Fargo had not adequately shown it would identify each of the overcharged insurance customers.

This is only the latest in the ongoing problems Wells Fargo has faced regarding a string of different scandals that ran over the last two years. The largest scandals began in September 2016, when it was determined that the bank’s employees had opened an estimated millions of accounts in the names of its customers, without the knowledge or consent of those customers. The purpose was to make it possible for the bank to meet its aggressive sales targets.

Repayment of insurance customers stopped - Stop SignThat said, the scandals didn’t stop there. Thousands of auto loan customers were sold car insurance they did not require as a part of their loans. As a result, many of these insurance customers could not afford their unnecessarily high payments and thousands had their credit scores damaged and even had vehicles repossessed.

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