Bank of America fined $250 million for “junk commissions”

United States authorities ordered on Tuesday the Bank of America (BoA), the second largest bank in the country, to pay a fine of $250 million for charging duplicate commissions, opening “false accounts” and not paying promised incentives to clients of its credit cards.

In a statement, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said the entity, which has committed other violations in the past, harmed “hundreds of thousands of consumers” over several years through “multiple lines of products and services.”

The CFPB accuses BoA of “repeatedly” charging the $35 commission established for a transaction rejected due to insufficient funds in the account, something that it describes as a plan to “reap junk commissions” and that it assures the entity was “a substantial additional income” over the years.

It adds that, since 2012, BoA employees, in order to exceed sales goals and evaluation criteria, have also opened credit card accounts without their customers’ knowledge or authorization, “illegally using and obtaining” their financial information to complete those requests without permission.

Due to these actions, the regulator indicates, the bank charged unjustified commissions to clients, who suffered a negative impact on their credit profiles and had to spend time correcting “mistakes.”

The opening of false accounts caused a scandal years ago within another large US bank, Wells Fargo, whose business has been hampered due to fines and impositions to correct the problems.

Finally, BoA is accused of attracting customers to open credit card accounts with offers of cash or points and then not having paid those incentives or bonuses “to tens of thousands”.

The fine consists of about 100 million that will go to compensate harmed consumers and another 150 million in penalties for the CFPB and the foreign exchange regulatory body in the United States.

BoA has been the subject of other fines before and last year had to pay 225 million for problems with the disbursement of state unemployment benefits during the covid-19 pandemic, while almost a decade ago it had to pay 727 million for related illegal practices with credit cards.