Why Ohio's Fifth Third Bank is paying $15 million over improperly opened accounts

CINCINNATI (WCMH) -- A bank headquartered in Cincinnati will pay $15 million to settle an investigation by a federal agency but could be on the hook for more money for its customers as well.

A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio handed down a $15 million civil penalty against Fifth Third Bank on Tuesday. The money will go to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which originally filed the lawsuit against the bank in 2020.

When it was first filed, a civil complaint document accused Fifth Third Bank's sales goals and incentives for its workers of causing multiple consumer protection law violations through at least 2016. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said that the bank's employees at every level of its branches were required to meet quotas of signing customers up for new services and products, sometimes as a condition to stay hired.

In order to meet the sales goals, CFPB said workers began signing account-holders up for those products without their knowledge. These included new deposit accounts, credit cards, online banking services and overdraft protection. The agency also reported instances where Fifth Third employees then moved money from a customer's existing account they knew of to the new accounts they had no knowledge of.

While the company has its roots in Ohio, its website says it has locations in 11 states. CFPB's lawsuit did not specify if the customers affected were in one state or multiple, nor did it share which ones. But the agency did elaborate on the company's lack of action, claiming it was aware of its employees' conduct.

"Despite knowing since at least 2008 that employees were opening unauthorized consumer-financial products and services, Fifth Third took insufficient steps to properly implement and monitor its program, detect and stop misconduct, and identify and remediate harmed consumers," the bureau's attorneys wrote. "Predictably, Fifth Third’s employees, without consumers’ knowledge or consent, opened deposit accounts in consumers’ names; transferred funds from consumers’ existing accounts to new, improperly opened accounts; issued credit cards; enrolled consumers in online-banking services; and opened lines of credit on consumers’ accounts."

Fifth Third Bank neither admitted nor denied the accusations from the bureau, according to the final judgment document from the case. But on top of its multimillion-dollar civil penalty, the judge also ordered the company to create a plan to provide relief to any customers who were affected by improperly opened accounts. Part of that means refunding "all fees and costs" incurred by the account holders.

View the final judgment and order document from the case below: