Bank of America agreed to pay a $12 million fine to settle U.S. regulatory charges that it routinely submitted inaccurate information about mortgage applicants to the federal government, violating a law that thousands of mortgage lenders have followed for decades, Reuters reported. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said on Tuesday that more than 400 loan officers at the second-largest U.S. bank failed to ask applicants required questions about their race, ethnicity and sex, and then falsely reported that the applicants chose not to respond. Failing to accurately report demographic data violates the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, a 1975 law that helps regulators assess whether lenders are serving their communities' housing needs and are not engaged in discriminatory lending, the CFPB said. Bank of America did not admit or deny wrongdoing in accepting the civil fine, which covered alleged conduct between 2016 and 2021.
