The company, which has been dubbed a “repeat offender” by regulators, faces another penalty for submitting inaccurate loan data.
Freedom Mortgage continues to come under fire from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal watchdog agency tasked with enforcing consumer financial law.
The mortgage company, which was also fined last year for its involvement in an illegal kickback scheme, is facing more monetary penalties due to errors in loan data.
Freedom must “pay for its actions”: On June 18, the CFPB announced it had filed a proposed order that would require Freedom Mortgage to pay a $3.95 million penalty for submitting “error-riddled” mortgage loan data to federal regulators.
In October, the CFPB filed a lawsuit against Freedom and warned the company that more fines were coming. This latest order appears to follow through on that promise.
“Freedom Mortgage is a repeat offender that has ignored requirements to submit accurate data that help federal regulators maintain a fair home lending market,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “The CFPB is making sure that Freedom Mortgage pays for their actions as well as institutes guardrails to prevent future violations.”
The penalty would also require Freedom Mortgage to regularly audit, test and correct the data.
A history of issues: The current complaint follows the October lawsuit and previous monetary penalties.
In August 2023, the Bureau fined Freedom $1.75 million for paying illegal kickbacks to real estate brokers and agents for mortgage loan referrals, an example of “anticompetitive behavior” and “a clear violation of federal law,” Chopra said at the time.
And in 2019, the CFPB imposed a $1.75 million fine on the company for intentionally reporting inaccurate ethnicity, gender and race information on mortgage loan data from 2014 to 2017.
About Freedom Mortgage: The company is a nonbank mortgage loan originator based in Boca Raton, Florida. According to the CFPB, the company reported data on more than 700,000 mortgage loan applications in 2020.
