The OCC issued its consent order May 10, but it was not publicly released until June 10. The bank neither admitted nor denied the allegations described below.
According to the OCC’s consent order, between at least 2011 and 2021, MUFG Union Bank “stated in account disclosures that all customers of the private bank program would receive certain fee waivers and discounts.” It did not do so, however, and only applied the fee waivers and discounts to certain customers of the program, the OCC stated in its consent order.
The OCC’s consent order also stated that, between at least 2005 and 2020, MUFG Union Bank stated in account disclosures that it would “waive or discount the fee for safe deposit box rentals for certain customers.” Again, it did not do so, according to the consent order.
Lastly, between at least 2013 and 2021, MUFG Union Bank stated in account disclosures that it would “waive monthly service charge fees for deposit accounts under certain conditions, including if the customer had a mortgage with the bank or if the customer maintained minimum deposit balances across multiple linked accounts,” the OCC consent order stated. “Regarding the customers with mortgages, the disclosures did not state that the eligible customers must affirmatively request their mortgage be linked to their deposit account to receive the monthly service charge fee waiver.”
“Even when customers requested to link either a mortgage or other deposit account, the bank did not always implement the requests,” the consent order added. “Therefore, during this period, the bank did not apply monthly service charge fee waivers as described.”
According to the OCC, the incidents were caused by “one or more weaknesses in the design or execution of procedures and internal controls within the bank.” Consequently, the deceptive practices resulted in Section 5 violations of the FTC Act that was “part of a pattern of misconduct and resulted in pecuniary gain to the bank.” 
Jaclyn Jaeger is a contributing editor at Compliance Chief 360° and a freelance business writer based in Manchester, New Hampshire.