The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced on Tuesday that Bank of America accepted to pay a $12 million fine for submitting inaccurate information about its mortgage applicants.
According to CFPB, Bank of America loan officers failed to ask applicants routine questions about certain demographic data like race, ethnicity, and sex, and then filled out the missing data, mostly falsely, themselves. By doing so, the bank violated the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which was enacted in 1975 with the goal of providing transparency about the lending process and discouraging discrimination to certain geographical areas and demographics.
“We will be taking additional steps to ensure that Bank of America stops breaking the law,” said CFPB’s Director Rohit Chopra in a statement.
Bank of America engaged in providing false information about mortgage applications between 2016 and 2021, according to CFPB. However, although the bank accepted the fine, it didn’t provide an admission of guilt or deny its wrongdoings.
Bank of America was the fifth largest mortgage lender in the United States in 2022 by dollar amount with $72 billion. It ranked sixth among the largest mortgage lenders in terms of volume in the same period, closing 121,486 loans.