The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s newest issue of Supervisory Highlights reports that the Bureau recovered $14 million in restitution for consumers in the first six months of 2017. More than 100,000 consumers benefitted, according to the Bureau. Separate supervisory actions resulted in an additional $2.9 million in consumer remediation or civil penalties, the CFPB said.
The Summer 2017 Supervisory Highlights issue points out a number of supervision focuses. The CFPB draws attention to examiner findings that consumers were:
- given incorrect information about when bank checking account service fees would be waived or what transactions were covered by overdraft protection;
- not told about the cost of making credit card account payments by telephone as opposed to less-expensive payment methods;
- subjected to car repossessions that should have been cancelled;
- victimized by improper debt collection practices related to short-term, small-dollar loans, including collectors attempting to collect debts owed by a different person or contacting third parties about consumers’ debts;
- given incorrect information about short-term, small-dollar credit application or approval processes;
- charged mortgage loan application fees or closing fees that are prohibited by the Bureau’s mortgage disclosure rules; and
- denied the opportunity to take full advantage of the mortgage loss mitigation options for which they might have qualified.
Frozen accounts. The CFPB also criticizes how at least one bank responded to suspected suspicious activity in consumer accounts. According to the Bureau, "one or more institutions engaged in unfair acts or practices by placing hard holds on customer accounts to stop all activity when the institution(s) observed suspicious activity." These hard holds were unnecessarily harsh, depriving consumers of access to their funds for as long as two weeks and causing payments to be dishonored.
The problem was aggravated by poor communication with the affected consumers about the hard holds, the Bureau adds.
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