OCC hits Wells Fargo again

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has issued a $20 million Civil Money Penalty order to Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., along with an order to make restitution to servicemembers harmed by the bank's violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA). The OCC found that between approximately 2006 and 2016, the bank violated three separate provisions of the SCRA. The bank failed to:

• provide the 6-percent interest rate limit to servicemember obligations or liabilities incurred before military service;
• accurately disclose servicemembers’ active duty status to the court via affidavits prior to evicting those servicemembers; and
• obtain court orders prior to repossessing servicemembers’ automobiles.

The OCC said that the $20 million penalty reflects "the duration and frequency of violations, the financial harm to the servicemembers, deficiencies and weaknesses in the bank’s SCRA compliance program and ineffective compliance risk management."

The OCC took this action in coordination with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, which issued a separate order for restitution and a $60,000 civil penalty, related to the bank’s repossession-related SCRA violations.

See "Wells Fargo pays $20M for SCRA infractions," in our Penalties pages, for more information on these enforcement actions.