Dive Brief:
- Truist launched two simplified accounts with no overdraft fees, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank announced Monday.
- In addition to no overdraft fees, Truist One Checking features a negative balance buffer of $100, free for qualifying clients, while the Truist Confidence Account is a checkless account, the bank said.
- The bank estimates the new accounts, along with several other fee-related changes the bank instituted this year, will eliminate $300 million in service charges per year by 2024.
Dive Insight:
"Our clients told us they want less complexity, more convenience, and freedom from worry about overdraft charges, and we're delivering on that," Dontá Wilson, Truist’s chief retail and small-business banking officer, said in a statement. "As we reimagine the financial services experience with our clients, we're putting care into every interaction and changing lives for the better."
In response to customer feedback, the $544 billion-asset bank said it began to discontinue other consumer account fees, such as for returned items, negative account balances and overdraft protection transfers in April.
Other lenders that instituted plans to roll back fees this year, or announced plans to do so, include U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America.
Regional banks M&T, Huntington and KeyBank have followed suit, while banks such as Citi, Ally and Capital One have eliminated overdraft fees entirely.
Truist’s latest no-overdraft-fee rollout comes as Democratic lawmakers have renewed their push to pass legislation targeting the fees charged by banks.
“[T]he big banks have to be held accountable for predatory practices that they have gotten away with for far too long,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, said during a press conference last week.
The increased attention to overdraft issues also comes as the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) last week issued guidance for banks to implement transparent overdraft policies and to eliminate “onerous fees.”
