By Marshall Eckblad Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK---(Dow Jones)- Huntington Bancshares Inc. (HBAN) said it will give its retail customers at least a business day without fees to restore any overdrawn accounts as the Ohio regional bank is the latest big U.S. lender to trim high-priced overdraft fees and concede revenue after a surge of industry criticism from lawmakers and consumer groups. Huntington in Columbus, with 650 branches in six states, said it will lose $24 million in revenues next year because of the new policy, which will automatically apply to existing retail bank accounts starting Monday. Customers who overdraw their account, which would normally trigger a fee, will have at least one business day to restore the account's funds before Huntington charges fees. Huntington earned $302 million in service charges on deposits over the last four quarters, according to regulatory filings. "This feature will clearly lower our revenues," said Huntington Chief Executive Stephen Steinour, but he declined to say by how much. "We will make this up in deposit volume over time," he said, convinced the bank can win new clients with a friendlier overdraft policy. He said the bank won't make up for the policy by raising or levying other fees. "We wanted to break out [and] break away from this feeling of anger with the industry," said Steinour. The policy "fundamentally gets at this issue of fair play." Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) have both scaled back overdraft fees at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter. -By Marshall Eckblad, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-303-0544; marshall.eckblad@dowjones.com
