The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has cited Hyundai Capital America for providing consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) with erroneous consumer credit information for years, even after knowing about the discrepancies.
The mistakes might have negatively affected consumers’ access to credit, the CFPB said, and has penalized the automobile finance company $19 million.
Hyundai Capital America acted as seller and servicer on billions of asset-backed securities backed by retail auto installment loans. The auto ABS notes were sold to investors through various platforms, including the Hyundai Auto Lease Securitization and Hyundai Auto Receivables trusts.
In a consent order issued earlier this week, the CFPB board said that Hyundai Capital America failed to update and correct information it provided to the CRAs.
Hyundai also furnished information to CRAs about severely delinquent, or charge-off accounts, but failed to furnish dates of first delinquency, the CFPB said.
Wherever Hyundai found information to be inaccurate, Hyundai also failed to modify or delete information disputed by consumers.
The CFPB also took issue with some of Hyundai Capital’s processes for handling consumer information, including when it came to instances of identity theft. Hyundai Capital lacked reasonable procedures to respond to concerns from CRAs indicting that information that had been provided previously was the result of identity theft, and should have been excluded from their credit reports.
Also, Hyundai did not establish or implement reasonable written policies to ensure that whatever information it submitted to a CRA is accurate, the CFPB said.
The CFPB noted that Hyundai accepted its consent order without admitting or denying any of the findings.
