Wells Fargo & Co. said yesterday that it will refund a swath of fees it assessed to mortgage borrowers whose delays in completing their loan applications were primarily the bank’s fault, the Los Angeles Times reported today. As it looks to win back trust after a scandal over its sales practices, the San Francisco bank said that it will reach out to customers who paid so-called “rate-lock extension” fees from Sept. 16, 2013, through Feb. 28, 2017, and give refunds to customers who don’t think they should have paid. The fees are supposed to only be charged when borrowers fail to finish their paperwork on time and want to retain the initially quoted interest rate on their home loan. The San Francisco bank said that roughly $98 million in extension fees were assessed to about 110,000 borrowers during that period, but it thinks a substantial number of the fees were appropriately charged. The bank said that the amount to be refunded probably will be lower, as not all of the fees assessed were actually paid and some fees already have been refunded.
