The CFPB today issued a “Supervisory Highlights” report focusing on examiner observations of several financial products conducted between January and June of 2021. The bureau flagged several areas where issues were observed, including credit card account management; debt collection; deposits; fair lending; mortgage servicing; payday lending; prepaid accounts and remittance transfers.
Examiners noted several issues related to mortgage servicing, some of which were related to COVID-19 relief measures. Among other things, examiners observed firms charging delinquency-related fees to borrowers in CARES Act forbearances; failing to terminate preauthorized electronic funds transfers; charging consumers unauthorized amounts; misrepresenting loan transaction and payment history in online accounts; failing to evaluate complete loss mitigation applications within 30 days; incorrectly handling partial payments; and failing to automatically terminate private mortgage insurance.
Turning to fair lending, the bureau said it observed pricing discrimination among certain supervised firms that offered pricing exceptions based upon competitive offers from other institutions. Examiners “identified lenders with statistically significant disparities for the incidence of pricing exceptions for African American and female applications compared to similarly situated non-Hispanic white and male borrowers,” the report noted. “Furthermore, examiners noted that lenders failed to retain documentation to support pricing exceptions.”
The CFPB also flagged instances of religious discrimination, where lenders were “improperly inquiring about small business applicants’ religion” and “considering an applicant’s religion in the credit decision.”
