Exclusive: Sen. Warren presses credit unions on late fees

• Key insight: Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is leading a group of lawmakers in asking credit unions to curb their overdraft practices. 
• Forward look: Going forward, the National Credit Union Administration no longer publicly reports overdraft or nonsufficient fund data for individual credit unions. 
• What's at stake: Warren has investigated overdraft fees at individual credit unions before, but Monday's letter represents a broader push to change the credit union industry's overdraft practices. 

WASHINGTON — A group of Senate Democrats led, by Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are pushing  credit unions to rethink their overdraft fees. 

This past May, the National Credit Union Administration said that it would no longer publish overdraft and non-sufficient fund fee income for individual credit unions. The availability of the data was short-lived — lasting only from the beginning of 2024, when the NCUA began holding credit unions to the same overdraft disclosure standards as banks. 

Warren, along with Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, sent letters to 21 credit unions requesting detailed information about their overdraft and non-sufficient fund fee policies. The inquiry targets institutions that federal data shows collected the most revenue from such fees in 2024. 

"The NCUA has decided to no longer publish overdraft and non-sufficient fund fee data, meaning that your members, Congress, and the general public will no longer have systemic insights into how much your credit union and its members benefit from overdraft fees," the senators said in the letters. "This lack of transparency and accountability is concerning, given the administration's rollback of other regulations designed to help consumers."

In the same timeframe, the Trump administration's dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a successful bid by the Republican party in Congress to nullify the bureau's overdraft rule has made any further curbing of overdraft fees, in banks as well as credit unions, very unlikely.

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"This will hurt working Americans already struggling to make ends meet, allowing some credit unions to continue exploiting consumers with sky-high overdraft fees with no transparency or accountability," the lawmakers said. 

The NCUA is also operating with only a single board member, Chairman Kayle Hauptman, after President Donald Trump dismissed the board's Democratic members. That is the subject of an ongoing court case, whereby the ousted board members, including former Chairman Todd Harper, argue that the board cannot take many policy-making actions because the NCUA statute requires a quorum of two members to undertake official business. 

The Democratic lawmakers asked the credit unions for details on their overdraft policies, including how much they charge per customer, how many customers' accounts they have closed, and what changes, if any, they plan to make to their policies this year.

The credit unions include: Navy Federal, Broadview, State Employees, Vystar, Municipal, Suncoast, CommunityAmerica, Everwise, Randolph-Brooks, Eastman, Mountain America, Idaho Central, America First, Police & Fire, Desert Financial, Security Service, MidFlorida, Members 1st, Golden 1 and California Credit Union and Northern Island. 

The list includes Frontwave, which has previously come into Warren's crosshairs. Warren led a bipartisan investigation, joined by then-Senator and now Vice President JD Vance, into Frontwave's overdraft fees and whether they unfairly targeted Marine recruits.