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Americans who spend more than they have in their bank accounts won't be burdened with hefty fees come October next year.
On Thursday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that it finalized a rule that would limit overdraft fees at the bank. Overdraft fees are charged when customers make a withdrawal that results in a negative account balance. However, the CFPB found that some banks charged higher fees than they needed to cover their losses, leaving consumers in a financial bind.
The new rule updates federal regulations for banks with more than $10 billion in assets. It provides those banks with options for lowering overdraft fees, including capping them at $5. For banks that choose to offer overdraft as a service for their customers, the rule allows banks to set their fee at an amount that covers costs and losses. If banks do want to keep making profits off of overdraft fees, they'll have to disclose the terms of it like they do with credit cards and other loans.
These changes are expected to save Americans up to $5 billion each year, or $225 per household, the CFPB said.
"For far too long, the largest banks have exploited a legal loophole that has drained billions of dollars from Americans' deposit accounts," CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. "The CFPB is cracking down on these excessive junk fees and requiring big banks to come clean about the interest rate they're charging on overdraft loans."
Lower-earning Americans are disproportionately impacted by overdraft fees, per a previous report from the CFPB. The agency found that around a third of households with income below $65,000 were charged with an overdraft or a non-sufficient fee, compared to just 10% of consumers in households earning over $175,000. Americans of color and those without a college degree were also more likely to live in households affected by those fees.
The CFPB's finalization of the overdraft rule comes as the future of the agency is unclear. President-elect Donald Trump tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which aims to get rid of government waste. The two DOGE leaders said they would accomplish that goal, in part, by eliminating some federal agencies, including the CFPB.
"Delete CFPB," Musk wrote in a late November post on X. "There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies."
Chopra responded to Musk's remarks during an MSNBC interview on December 7, saying that getting rid of the CFPB would be "mayhem" and "begging for a financial crisis."
"I don't understand why people would want financial crime," Chopra said, "and if they say it's duplicative, who else will do it?"
Have you paid overdraft fees or struggled with banking fees? Contact these reporters at asheffey@businessinsider.com and jkaplan@businessinsider.com.
