Sen. Elizabeth Warren made JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon squirm as she revealed that while the big banks got overdraft protection from regulators during the pandemic, they made billions on overdraft fees from their struggling customers.
May 27, 2021

In a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Warren said customers at the big banks paid a total of $4 billion in overdraft fees last year, much of it from people earning under $50,000 a year, Blacks and Hispanics. That, despite the fact that banking regulators recommended such fees get waived.

"You could've passed on the breaks that you got from the Fed to your customers, but you didn't do it," Warren said. Calling Dimon “the star of the overdraft show,” the two sparred as Dimon claimed not to know how much his bank earned from overdraft fees. But Warren said the numbers are public and that JPMorgan Chase earned nearly $1.5 billion in overdraft fees. She also said the the bank would have earned $27.6 in profits without them.

"You and your colleagues come in today to talk about how you stepped up and took care of customers during a pandemic, and it's a bunch of baloney," she said. "In fact, it's about $4 billion worth of baloney. But you could fix that right now."

She asked Dimon and three other CEOs, from Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, if they’d refund those fees to the customers. Dimon said, “No.” The others were silent.

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