NEW YORK — Two federal regulators are fining Wells Fargo $1 billion for forcing customers into car insurance and charging mortgage borrowers unfair fees.
The penalty was announced early Friday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
It is the harshest action taken by the Trump administration against a Wall Street bank.
Wells Fargo apologized last year for charging as many as 570,000 clients for car insurance they didn’t need.
An internal review by Wells Fargo found that about 20,000 of those customers may have defaulted on their car loans and had their vehicles repossessed in part because of those unnecessary insurance costs.
In October, the bank revealed that some mortgage borrowers were inappropriately charged for missing a deadline to lock in promised interest rates, even though the delays were Wells Fargo’s fault.
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