The US authorities have imposed a sanction of 250 million dollars on Bank of America (BoA), the second largest entity in the country, for charging duplicate commissions, opening “false accounts” and not paying promised incentives to their card customers. of credit. As announced in a statement, the Consumer Financial Protection Office (CFPB) highlights that the entity, which has committed other offenses in the past, harmed “hundreds of miles of consumers” over several years and through of “multiple lines of products and services”. In any case, the fine has not made a dent among investors and its shares were up two hours after the opening around 0.5%.
The CFPB accuses BoA of having “repeatedly” charged the $35 commission established for a transaction that was rejected due to insufficient funds in the account, something that it describes as a plan to “reap junk commissions” and adds that it caused the entity “a substantial additional income” over the years. This agency has also added that, since 2012, BoA employees, in order to exceed sales goals and evaluation criteria, also opened credit card accounts without their clients knowing or having authorized it, “illegally using and obtaining” their financial information to complete those requests without permission.
For all of the above, the regulator has charged the bank with unjustified commissions to customers, which suffered a negative impact on their credit profiles and had to invest time in correcting “mistakes.” The opening of false accounts caused a scandal years ago within another large American bank, Wells Fargo, whose business has been hampered due to fines and impositions to correct the problems.
100 million to compensate consumers
Bank of America is also accused of attracting customers to open credit accounts with offers of cash or points and then not having paid those incentives or bonuses “within tens of miles” from them. The sanction consists of about 100 million that will go to compensate harmed consumers and another 150 million penalty for the CFPB and the foreign exchange regulatory body in the United States.
It is not the first time that the second entity in the country has faced this type of feelings. Last year he had to pay 225 million for problems with the disbursement of state unemployment benefits during the Covid-19 pandemic, while almost a decade ago he was forced to pay 727 million for illegal practices related to credit cards.
