MASSACHUSETTS
The Sage Bank agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging lending discrimination in connection with allegations that the financial institution was charging higher interest rates to blacks and Hispanic borrowers for home loans, officials announced Monday.
The result of the discrimination was that the average black borrower paid about $2,500 more for a loan than did a similarly qualified white borrower; the average Hispanic borrower paid about $1,400 more, according to the civil complaint.
“Sage Bank’s loan pricing policies created the risk that borrowers would be treated differently based on impermissible characteristics like race and national origin, and that was in fact the result,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division.
Adding, “This settlement ensures that all potential borrowers will be treated equally, regardless of race and national origin, and Sage Bank has agreed to restructure and monitor its lending practices to ensure that it is meeting those obligations.”
The U.S. Justice Department reached the settlement, resolving allegations of mortgage lending discrimination and violaitons of the Fair Housing Act, and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, officials said.
Under the consent order, Sage Bank will pay $1.1 million into a settlement fund to compensate borrowers and applicants who were harmed by Sage Bank’s policies.
The consent order also requires Sage Bank to establish a new loan pricing policy and a new loan officer compensation policy, have loan officers and bank employees undergo fair housing and fair lending training, and establish a monitoring program to detect future unlawful disparities in mortgage loan pricing.
Federal officials allege that Sage Bank charged African-American and Hispanic borrowers higher prices for home loans than Sage Bank charged to similarly situated white borrowers for reasons unrelated to their creditworthiness.
Specifically, under Sage Bank’s pricing policy, each of its loan officers was assigned a “target price,” which was the price a loan officer was required to achieve on each home loan, regardless of a borrower’s creditworthiness, officials said.
The complaint alleges that those loan officers whom Sage Bank assigned higher target prices disproportionately served African-American and Hispanic borrowers. In addition, loan officers had discretion to price loans above their target prices and did so to a greater extent for African-American and Hispanic borrowers than for white borrowers.
“Sage Bank’s discriminatory practices were aimed at some of our most vulnerable neighborhoods and populations,” said U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz of Massachusetts. “Homeownership is the foundation of the American dream, and we will continue our work to ensure that all people – regardless of their skin color or the language they speak – have equal access to that dream.”
The lawsuit originated from a referral by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.