(Reuters) – The top U.S. consumer finance watchdog on Tuesday said it had fined the Nebraska payment processor ACI Worldwide $25 million for improperly processing more than $2 billion in mortgage payment transactions without customer authorization.
The transactions occurred in April 2021 and affected nearly 500,000 homeowners with mortgages served by Mr. Cooper, exposing many to overdraft and insufficient funds fees, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“The CFPB’s investigation found that ACI perpetrated the 2021 Mr. Cooper mortgage fiasco that impacted homeowners across the country,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement, adding that customer accounts had since been fixed but that the agency was penalizing the company for inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of borrowers.
ACI Worldwide Corp and a subsidiary, ACI Payments Inc, consented to the CFPB order without admitting or denying responsibility.
According to the CFPB, during a test of its electronic payments platform in April 2021, ACI improperly used actual consumer data, rather than dummy data, which illegally initiated more than $2.3 billion in payments.
At one bank, more than 60,000 accounts were debited more than $330 million the following morning, with about 7,300 account balances reduced by more than $10,000.
(Reporting by Douglas Gillison; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
