Wells Fargo Accelerates Launch of No-Overdraft-Fee Bank Account

(Bloomberg) -- Wells Fargo & Co. launched one of its promised new bank accounts earlier than scheduled as the firm remakes some of offerings under Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf.

The no-overdraft-fee account, Wells Fargo’s first offered across the U.S., is available for $5 a month, according to a statement Tuesday. The firm announced the planned move and a second new account that limits overdraft fees in March. At the time, it said the new products would be available by early 2021.

The new account is part of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo’s broader effort to streamline businesses after a series of scandals that began with the 2016 revelation that branch employees opened millions of fake accounts to hit sales goals. The firm is working to simplify bank accounts by combining legacy products with other offerings to make them “way simpler to service,” according to Ed Kadletz, who runs the deposit products group.

“With this program, we’ve got a way to make sure that customers have at least as much in terms of value and benefits as they had in the past, but then we could simplify the operations, which helps our bankers, helps our customers, gets questions answered more quickly, et cetera,” Mary Mack, Wells Fargo’s head of community banking, said in an interview.

Check-less “Clear Access Banking” is aimed at consumers who want an account to help manage spending or who are new to banking, according to Tuesday’s statement. The firm said it will waive the $5 monthly fee for primary account holders aged 13 to 24.

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