CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU ANNOUNCES SETTLEMENT WITH WASHINGTON FEDERAL BANK, N.A. FOR FLAWED MORTGAGE-LOAN DATA REPORTING

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) settled with Washington Federal Bank, N.A., a federally insured national bank, to address the Bureau's finding that it reported inaccurate Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data about its mortgage transactions for 2016 and 2017.  Inaccurate HMDA data can make it difficult for the public and regulators to discover and stop discrimination in home mortgage lending or for public officials and lenders to tell whether a community's credit needs are being met.  Under the consent order the Bureau issued on October 27, 2020 (File No. 2020-BCFP-0019), Washington Federal must pay a $200,000 civil money penalty and develop and implement an effective compliance-management system to prevent future violations, as the CFPB's release of the same date summarized.

The Bureau found that Washington Federal, headquartered in Seattle, Washington, violated HMDA, its implementing regulation, Regulation C, and the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 (CFPA) by failing to report accurate data about its mortgage-loan applications to the Bureau.  The 2020 consent order records that the Bureau had already entered a consent order against Washington Federal on October 9, 2013, finding that it violated HMDA and Regulation C, with a $34,000 penalty (paragraph 24).  

According to the consent order, Washington Federal reported data on over 7,000 covered loans on each of its 2016 and 2017 HMDA LARs (paragraph 13).  The same order records that an internal audit of the 2016 LAR found errors in 40 of the 100 files reviewed, a 40% error rate (paragraph 15), and that Bureau reviews of the 2017 LAR found sample error rates of 32% as first submitted and 16% after resubmission (paragraphs 16 and 17).  The Bureau found that the errors in Washington Federal's 2016 HMDA data were caused by a lack of appropriate staff, insufficient staff training, and ineffective quality control, and that the errors in its 2017 HMDA data were directly related to weaknesses in Washington Federal's compliance-management system.  Weaknesses were specifically found in the areas of board and management oversight, monitoring, and policies and procedures. These significant errors in reported mortgage-application data violated Regulation C and HMDA.  These violations also constituted violations of the CFPA.

Where this stands now. The Bureau terminated the 2020 consent order on September 22, 2025, noting that Washington Federal had paid the $200,000 penalty and put in place a compliance plan for collecting, recording and reporting HMDA data. The CFPB's enforcement action page lists the order as terminated.

The consent order is available at: https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_washington-federal-na_consent-order_2020-10.pdf