UMB Bank overdraft fees and the overdraft programs at banks and credit unions across the country may be used to get the largest amount of money from consumers.

Financial institutions can use a number of methods to wring money from their customers through their overdraft programs: unnecessarily high fees, not allowing customers to opt out, deliberately processing transactions out of order, or withholding information about the program.

What is an Overdraft Protection Program?

Banks and credit unions alike will often offer overdraft protection programs to their customers, purportedly to protect customers from overdrawing their accounts.

With overdraft protection, a customer is able to complete a transaction despite not having enough money in that account. Each time this occurs, customers are charged an overdraft fee on top of the payment itself to cover the transfer of funds.

For some bank customers, this is a helpful program that kicks in once in a while when they misjudge how much money they have in their account. For others, however, overdraft fees can be extremely problematic.

Banks and credit unions can engage in a number of practices that maximize their revenues from customers through overdraft fees. Reports indicate that the banking industry brings in billions each year from their overdraft fee programs alone.

When customers initially sign up for a bank account, overdraft protection programs like UMB Bank overdraft fees may be purposely misrepresented in terms of the benefits they actually provide. Some banks may fail to fully explain the details of the program entirely.

Overdraft Fees Deceptive Practices

There are several methods that a bank or credit union can use to manipulate their customers into paying excessive amounts of money in overdraft fees.

These overdraft practices include purposely reordering customer transactions ─a practice that may seem inconsequential, but can make significant changes to how much a person owes in overdraft fees. Indeed, a financial institution can reorder a customer’s payment transactions to incur extra overdraft fees.

Normally, banks process transactions in chronological order─that is, the order in which they are made. But if transactions are processed from the highest payment to the lowest, then each payment is increasingly more likely to overdraw the account. Each payment that overdraws the account will incur its own separate overdraft fee, which can build up quickly, even if the initial fee isn’t too excessive. In some cases, though, overdraft fees are excessively high, which can only make this situation worse.

When bank customers consistently have less money in their accounts, they are much more likely to overdraw them, so the people most negatively impacted by UMB Bank overdraft fees are charged the most often.

Some customers who have been affected by deceptive programs like UMB Bank overdraft fees have begun filing overdraft fees lawsuits to challenge these practices.

If you have been subjected to unfair UMB Bank overdraft fees or deceptive overdraft practices from another financial institution, you may be able to join a class action overdraft fees lawsuit or file a claim of your own.

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