The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a blog post today that showed that overdraft revenue has increased over the past year, based on the CFPB’s analysis of Call Report data. The CFPB found that the recent increase in overdraft revenue is greatest among community and midsize banks. However, the data show that overall overdraft revenue is down 20% since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019.
Observing that several banks announced changes to their overdraft programs in late 2021 and 2022, the CFPB stated that it is an “open question how these program changes, once implemented, translate into changes in overdraft/NSF fee revenues.”
The CFPB also noted that account maintenance and ATM fees have increased since 2020, including at banks that experienced a decrease in overdraft revenue. Nonetheless, the CFPB stated that, for two banks whose ATM and account maintenance fees have increased significantly since 2020, the increases in revenues from these other fees were “far from sufficient to make up for the decline in overdraft/NSF fee revenues.”
