Wells Fargo to Refund Some Mortgage Fees

Wells Fargo has announced that it will issue refunds on fees that were charged to mortgage borrowers whose loan applications were delayed because of the bank.

 

The Los Angeles Times is reporting the San Francisco-based bank is contacting borrowers who were charged rate-lock extension fees between Sept. 16, 2013, through Feb. 28, 2017, and will offer refunds to those who believe they were unfairly charged. The rate-lock extension fee is enacted borrowers fail to finish their paperwork on time and want to retain the original mortgage interest rate.

 

The rate-lock extension fee issue was initially reported in January by the news site ProPublica. In a statement issued yesterday, Wells Fargo said that approximately $98 million in extension fees were charged to 110,000 borrowers, adding that its “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.”

 

Wells Fargo the nation’s largest mortgage lender, originating $244 billion in residential mortgages during 2016, or about 12 percent of all mortgages.

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