Among the 20 largest consumer banks in the country, Regions Bank collected more overdraft fee revenue per checking account than any other in 2025, about $30 a year on average. That figure comes from the same federal call-report data that regulators and consumer advocates use to track the industry, and it answers a more useful question than any nationwide total: what an overdraft fee actually costs a household that holds an account at a specific bank.
Regions Bank Tops the List at About $30 a Year
The National Consumer Law Center’s June 2026 review of 2025 bank-reported overdraft data found Regions had the highest average overdraft fee revenue per checking account among the banks it tracked, at roughly $30 a year per account. That average includes every checking account at the bank, not just the ones that actually overdraw, which means the households that do overdraw are paying considerably more than the per-account figure suggests, while account holders who never overdraw effectively pay nothing toward that average at all.
The NCLC’s companion issue brief ranks the per-account revenue for the 20 largest consumer banks side by side, and Regions sits at the top of that specific ranking even though it is not the bank with the highest total overdraft revenue in dollar terms. Total revenue depends heavily on how many accounts a bank has open; per-account revenue strips that out and shows how much a bank’s fee structure and account terms actually draw from the customers it already has.
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Why Per-Account Revenue Tells a Different Story Than the Industry Total
JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo each collected roughly $1 billion or close to it in overdraft fees in 2025, more than any other bank in dollar terms, according to the NCLC’s analysis. But both banks also have tens of millions of accounts, which spreads that revenue thin on a per-account basis. Regions has a fraction of Chase’s account base, so the same NCLC data shows its $30-a-year average per account as the highest among large banks even though its total overdraft haul is far smaller than Chase’s or Wells Fargo’s.
That distinction matters for a household comparing banks, because a nationwide total of billions of dollars doesn’t tell any one customer what to expect from their own account. A per-account average, drawn from the same call reports banks file with federal regulators through the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, comes closer to answering that question, even though it still blends heavy overdrafters with account holders who never overdraw at all. A bank with a smaller, more fee-dependent customer base can post a higher per-account average than a giant bank with a far larger overdraft haul in raw dollars.
Other Large Banks Aren’t Far Behind
Regions isn’t alone near the top of the per-account ranking. The NCLC’s data lists Citizens Bank at $19 per account, TD Bank at $18, Fifth Third Bank and Huntington National Bank each at $17, and Wells Fargo at $15, all for 2025. Every one of those figures sits well above what a household would pay if its bank charged nothing at all, which four national banks, Capital One, Citibank, American Express and Ally, currently do.
Several of those same banks also posted some of the largest percentage increases in overdraft revenue since 2023: Huntington’s overdraft revenue rose 40% over that span, Citizens rose 24% and TD rose 22%, according to the NCLC’s issue brief. A bank can show up on both the growth list and the per-account list at once, which is one sign that its fee structure, not just its size, is driving the number higher.
Smaller Banks and One Credit Union Charge Even More Per Account
The highest per-account overdraft revenue in the NCLC’s review didn’t come from a top-20 bank at all. Woodforest Bank, a smaller institution the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had previously flagged for high overdraft fees, averaged $94 per account in 2025, with First Convenience Bank at $68 and Arvest Bank at $45. On the credit union side, Navy Federal Credit Union reported $28 per account in overdraft fees in 2024, the most recent year available, since the National Credit Union Administration stopped requiring credit unions to report that figure separately going forward. That change means the true 2025 credit-union picture is now harder for households and regulators alike to see, even as Navy Federal’s 2024 figure already ranked above all but one of the 20 largest banks.
How to See What Your Own Account Is Actually Costing
A bank’s per-account average is a useful benchmark, but it’s still an average across every customer, including the many who never overdraw at all. The number that matters for a specific household is what’s printed on its own statements: how many overdraft fees hit the account in a year and at what dollar amount each time. Comparing that total against a bank’s published fee schedule, and against averages like Regions’ $30 or the $0 charged by the handful of banks with no overdraft fee at all, is the most direct way to tell whether an account is costing more than it needs to.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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