TD Bank has assured regulators that it has eliminated unwanted customer accounts, industry sources said. In a separate 2020 case, TD Bank paid about $120 million to settle CFPB charges of wrongly pushing customers to enroll in overdraft protection. The Biden administration has taken a more skeptical view of bank mergers and has revitalized industry regulation under the OCC and other agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which oversees the business practices of banks, credit unions and thrifts with over $10 billion in assets. How regulators reviewing the deal will regard the 2017 findings is an open question, especially since some current and former TD Bank workers said the suspect sales practices continue. Revelations about abuses at TD Bank, which previously haven’t been publicly disclosed, come as the lender seeks regulatory approvals for its $13.4 billion bid for First Horizon (FHN), which would make it the sixth-largest retail financial institution in the U.S. ![]() Noreika declined to comment for this story, but a spokesperson for Simpson Thacher & Bartlett – the law firm where Noreika works – said when Noreika headed the OCC, he “was recused from all matters related to TD Bank.” Instead, the OCC gave TD Bank a private reprimand known as a Matter Requiring Attention (MRA) and ordered the bank to make sure that customers received services they wanted and understood. The OCC, led at the time by Trump appointee Keith Noreika, decided against a fine or even a public disclosure of TD Bank’s misconduct. In the industrywide investigation, regulators found that TD Bank’s aggressive sales goals and lax controls resulted in similar abuses: Employees created new accounts and enrolled customers in services without their permission, according to sources familiar with the confidential 2017 findings. Wells Fargo employees had created more than 3 million fake accounts to meet sky-high sales goals. ![]() ![]() The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the leading regulator for national banks, detected the misconduct at TD Bank during an industrywide probe into fake customer accounts spurred by a Wells Fargo (WFC) scandal that came to light in September 2016. Despite finding TD Bank (TD) wrongly pressured customers into opening accounts and using banking services they didn’t want, a leading bank regulator during the Trump administration opted to give the company a private reprimand rather than a fine for the abuses, according to sources familiar with the matter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |