The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued an order against Elkhorn, Nebraska-headquartered ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ:ACIW) and its subsidiary ACI Payments for improperly initiating approximately $2.3 billion in unlawful mortgage payment transactions.
According to the CFPB, ACI’s data handling practices negatively impacted nearly 500,000 homeowners with mortgages serviced by Mr. Cooper. As a result of this erroneous action, ACI exposed homeowners to overdraft and insufficient funds fees from their financial institutions.
The CFPB’s order requires ACI to pay a $25 million civil money penalty to the agency, which will deposit the funds into a victims’ relief fund. The company is also prohibited from processing payments without obtaining proper authorization and from using sensitive consumer financial information for software development or testing purposes “without documenting a compelling business reason and obtaining consumer consent.”
“The CFPB’s investigation found that ACI perpetrated the 2021 Mr. Cooper mortgage fiasco that impacted homeowners across the country,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “While borrower accounts have now been fixed, we are penalizing ACI for its unlawful actions that created headaches for hundreds of thousands of borrowers.”
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