Wintrust Financial Corporation (“Wintrust”) today announced that all overdraft and item return fees will end effective March 1, 2023 for consumer deposit accounts at each of its community banks. Business accounts will remain under the existing overdraft and item return fee structure.

President of Wintrust Timothy S. Crane, said: “Given the number of ways to engage customers through technology, the industry continues to move toward the use of financial education and notifications and away from account fees. In this light — rather than reduce or modify our fees as other peers have done — we made the decision to completely eliminate all overdraft and item return fees on consumer banking accounts. With real-time notifications and other tools accessible 24/7, we have seen a decrease in overdrafts and item returns as our customers can remedy those situations before they occur. And we believe that eliminating these charges altogether and working with our consumer banking clients when low balances occur will strengthen our relationships with them.”

Wintrust’s new overdraft and item return structure for consumer accounts

Effective March 1, 2023

• Eliminate the overdraft per item paid fee for consumer accounts
• Eliminate the per item return fee for consumer accounts
• No longer authorize ATM and POS transactions that would result in a negative account balance at the time of authorization

Changes to be implemented later in 2023

• At no cost, Wintrust consumer customers who have direct deposit to a Wintrust checking, savings, or money market account may receive qualifying payroll and government direct deposits up to two days early

Other existing account management features

In addition, consumers can manage their accounts with the following existing features to avoid overdrafts and item returns:

• Internal transfers for no charge
• Access to other banks’ ATMs for no charge on many consumer accounts
• Notifications if balance is running low via online/mobile banking
• Financial education resources and tools designed to help mitigate overdraft and item returns:
  
  
  • Notifications to customers when an overdraft occurs that provide tips for managing their accounts to help avoid future overdrafts
  • Offers of financial education services
  • Reminders to customers to set up alerts via online banking/mobile
  • Offers on alternative overdraft protection including transfers among multiple accounts and an overdraft protection line of credit
  • Offers Everyday loan for those who qualify to manage short-term liquidity needs

Please visit your local Wintrust branch to learn more about these changes.

Locate the branch nearest to you here.