Metro Bank customers to receive £10.5 million refund

Metro Bank customers are set to receive a £10.5m refund after the bank failed to provide unarranged overdraft warnings.

An investigation by the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) found that Metro Bank failed to inform nearly 130,000 of its customers that they would be charged for entering an unarranged overdraft, which banks are legally required to do in order to give customers time to act to avoid unarranged overdraft fees.

In addition to having to refund £10.5m in fees, Metro Bank has offered to pay back 8% interest on the charges and will consider reasonable claims for extra costs incurred by affected customers.

Metro Bank customers who have been impacted by this will not have to do anything, as the bank has stated that all affected customers will be contacted to ensure any related charges will be refunded, alongside 8% compensatory interest, by summer 2020.

David Thomasson, chief commercial officer at Metro Bank, said: “We are very sorry that we didn’t include all the information we should have done on our overdraft text alerts, and that on certain occasions some customers did not receive these alerts before 10am as they should have done. This isn't the level of service that we pride ourselves on providing and we are now contacting any customers who have been impacted to put things right for them as quickly as possible.”