Reference: FIL-32-2023
Official publication: Read the full FIL-32-2023 on the agency website
On April 10, 2026, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation issued a Financial Institution Letter announcing that it is rescinding FIL-32-2023, its June 16, 2023 supervisory guidance addressing multiple non-sufficient funds fees arising from re-presentment of the same unpaid transaction. The official FDIC notice is available here. The rescission is effective immediately and applies to all FDIC-supervised financial institutions.
Executive Summary
The FDIC has withdrawn the specific supervisory guidance that had framed examiner expectations for multiple re-presentment NSF fee practices. In the agency’s words, the 2023 guidance was rescinded after review because it was overly broad in scope and had created uncertainty regarding when disclosures about re-presentments might give rise to unfairness concerns under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.
That is a meaningful supervisory development, but not a wholesale deregulation of deposit account fee practices. The April 10, 2026 FIL does not say that repeated NSF fees are affirmatively permissible in all circumstances, and it does not repeal existing legal requirements governing accuracy of consumer disclosures, unfair or deceptive acts or practices risk, or other applicable consumer protection standards. To the contrary, the FDIC states that supervised institutions should ensure consumer disclosures accurately reflect actual practices and are provided in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and other current legal requirements.
Accordingly, FDIC-supervised institutions should read this action with precision. The agency has withdrawn one supervisory statement. It has not announced immunity for legacy fee practices, and it has not supplied replacement line-drawing on when repeated presentments, fee triggers, account agreements, or core processing logic may still create consumer compliance exposure.
What the FDIC Issued
The April 10, 2026 letter rescinds FIL-32-2023, titled FDIC Clarifying Supervisory Approach Regarding Supervisory Guidance on Multiple Re-Presentment NSF Fees. The FDIC explains that FIL-32-2023 itself had rescinded and replaced FIL-40-2022, the earlier supervisory guidance on the same topic. The agency therefore has now withdrawn the 2023 replacement guidance as well.
The FDIC’s stated rationale matters. The agency says it reviewed and assessed FIL-32-2023 and concluded that the guidance was overly broad and had raised uncertainty about when disclosures regarding re-presentments could result in unfairness concerns under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. The agency then states, without qualification, that FIL-32-2023 is rescinded effective immediately.
The notice is short and carefully framed. It does not adopt a new substantive standard for re-presentment NSF fees. It does not define the precise circumstances in which multiple fees tied to the same unpaid transaction may remain problematic. It also does not identify whether the FDIC expects future examiner treatment to rely more heavily on account-specific disclosures, transaction coding, processing sequences, or other factual predicates. The only forward-looking instruction supplied in the FIL is that institutions should make sure disclosures accurately reflect actual practices and comply with current law.
That last point is important because it preserves the difference between rescinding supervisory guidance and eliminating underlying compliance duties. A bank may no longer be operating under FIL-32-2023 as supervisory guidance, but it still must evaluate whether its deposit account program, fee logic, and customer-facing documents are accurate and legally supportable under the statutes and regulations that continue to apply.
Why It Matters
First, the rescission changes the supervisory posture. FIL-32-2023 had been the FDIC’s specific articulation of how it would view multiple re-presentment NSF fees in supervision. By withdrawing that document, the agency has removed a source of examiner-facing guidance that many institutions had treated as an operational benchmark for product design, account agreement revisions, fee suppression logic, and complaint review.
Second, the FDIC’s explanation indicates concern with overbreadth and legal uncertainty, not with disclosure accuracy as such. That distinction is material. The agency did not say that consumer disclosures are irrelevant; it said the prior guidance had created uncertainty about when disclosures concerning re-presentments might create unfairness concerns. Institutions therefore should not infer that careful drafting alone resolves all risk, but they also should not assume that the rescinded guidance continues to supply the governing framework.
Third, the notice reinforces the continuing importance of operational congruence. The FDIC expressly instructs institutions to ensure disclosures accurately reflect their practices. In this area, risk often turns on whether the legal agreement, fee schedule, short-form disclosures, customer service scripts, and core-system behavior describe the same event in the same way. If a bank’s documents suggest a single NSF fee per item but the system can assess multiple fees when merchants or originators re-present the same transaction, the disclosure problem is obvious. If the bank uses more nuanced language, the remaining question is whether the wording matches real processing outcomes across all channels and exception cases.
Fourth, the rescission matters for remediation decisions already made or under consideration. Some institutions revised disclosures, changed fee logic, added fee caps, or eliminated certain NSF fee practices in response to the 2022 and 2023 guidance environment. The new FIL does not require those institutions to reverse course. Whether any prior remediation should be revisited is a business and legal judgment that depends on actual account terms, system constraints, customer expectations, complaint history, and broader litigation and regulatory risk. The FDIC’s notice does not provide enough detail to support a blanket rollback.
Practical Action Checklist
- Inventory every consumer deposit product that can generate an NSF fee and identify whether the institution’s systems can assess more than one NSF fee on the same unpaid transaction when it is re-presented.
- Pull the current account agreement, fee schedule, account opening disclosures, change-in-terms notices, and any digital deposit account disclosures, then compare them line by line against actual core processing behavior.
- Test representative transaction scenarios with operations and core vendor personnel, including ACH, check, and debit-related workflows where re-presentment handling may differ.
- Determine whether fee assessment occurs because the item is treated as the same transaction on re-presentment or because the system recognizes each presentment as a separate fee event; document that logic precisely.
- Review complaint files, error claims, and customer service escalations for allegations that customers were charged multiple NSF fees on what they understood to be a single item.
- Confirm whether prior remediation tied to FIL-40-2022 or FIL-32-2023 remains in place, and identify any controls that were implemented solely because of the rescinded supervisory guidance.
- Prepare a short legal memorandum for management stating what changed on April 10, 2026, what did not change, and which institution-specific practices still require ongoing controls.
- Update examiner response materials so they accurately describe the bank’s present fee practice, the exact disclosure language in use, and the institution’s rationale for concluding the disclosures match operations.
- If third-party processors or core vendors drive fee logic, obtain current written descriptions of the re-presentment settings, available suppression tools, and any limitations on institution-level control.
- Escalate any mismatch between disclosures and practice for prompt correction, including account agreement revisions, system rule changes, refunds where warranted, and board or committee reporting if required by internal governance.
Open Questions and Watch Items
The FDIC’s notice leaves several issues unresolved. It does not state whether replacement guidance is forthcoming. It does not explain how examiners should now distinguish between disclosure issues, unfairness theories, and other consumer compliance concerns in this area. It also does not say whether the agency’s current view differs only from FIL-32-2023’s articulation or from the broader supervisory concerns that animated the 2022 and 2023 materials.
Institutions should also note what the FDIC did not do. The agency did not endorse any particular disclosure formulation for repeated presentments. It did not provide a safe harbor for charging multiple NSF fees on the same underlying transaction. It did not address restitution expectations, prior supervisory findings, pending examinations, or how this rescission may interact with institution-specific facts. Those omissions mean counsel and compliance officers should avoid overreading the rescission.
For now, the most defensible approach is disciplined alignment between written disclosures and operational reality, supported by documented testing and clear governance. The FDIC has removed a supervisory statement that it concluded was too broad and too uncertain. It has not removed the need for precise disclosure drafting, accurate system mapping, or fact-based legal analysis of fee practices that remain sensitive from a consumer protection perspective.
My Law Tampa publishes this memorandum as part of its banking regulatory analysis for the firm’s website.
This memorandum is informational only and does not create an attorney-client relationship.
