Regions Bank owes some customers money. The check may already be in your name.
Between 2018 and 2021, Alabama-based Regions Bank charged surprise overdraft fees on transactions it had already approved. The CFPB caught it. $141 million in refunds are going out — but some checks are sitting uncashed.
The CFPB ordered Regions Bank to refund $141 million for illegal surprise overdraft fees charged between August 2018 and July 2021. Refunds go out automatically — but if you had a closed account, your check was mailed and may be uncashed. Check at odrefund.regions.com or call 1-800-458-5893. No claim form needed.
$141M
ordered refunded
3 yrs
of illegal fees
$0
to claim — no form
Regions Bank is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. It serves millions of customers across the South. And between 2018 and 2021, federal regulators found it was quietly doing something illegal to a good chunk of them.
The bank charged overdraft fees on debit card and ATM transactions where the customer's account had enough money when the purchase was authorized — but not when it settled a day or two later, because other charges came through in the meantime. The fee hit even though Regions had already told the customer the transaction was approved.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau called this an "Authorize Positive, Settle Negative" fee and ruled the practice illegal. In September 2022, Regions was ordered to refund customers and pay a $50 million civil penalty — one of the largest overdraft enforcement actions in the agency's history.
What happened
From August 1, 2018 through July 14, 2021, Regions charged customers surprise overdraft fees on already-approved transactions. What made it worse: regulators found that Regions management had been warned internally about the problem for years — and chose to keep the fee in place while it searched for replacement revenue. The bank knew. It kept charging anyway.
Who qualifies
You need to have had a Regions checking account during that window and been charged a "Paid Overdraft Item Fee" or "Overdraft Protection Transfer Fee" on a CheckCard transaction that authorized positive and settled negative. Not every Regions customer qualifies — only those hit with this specific fee type. Regions ran a detailed analysis to identify affected accounts.
How the refunds are going out
What to do right now
Why this matters beyond the check
For most customers the individual refund will be modest — a handful of overdraft fees at roughly $36 each. But this was the second time in a decade the CFPB had to take enforcement action against Regions for overdraft practices. A $49 million refund and $7.5 million penalty came in 2015 for a related set of violations.
If you banked with Regions during that three-year window, checking takes two minutes. There's no form if Regions has your information on file. The only cost is the time to look.
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