By Katanga Johnson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said on Tuesday it was taking immediate action to understand and resolve how "hundreds of thousands" of mortgage borrowers' bank accounts were debited for duplicate payments after a mortgage servicer announced the error on Monday.
Texas-based Mr. Cooper, which is the largest U.S. non-bank mortgage servicer, announced an unauthorized April 24 discovery of duplicate-payment drafts from some of its borrowers' bank accounts in a blog post, adding that it was working on reversing what it called a "payment-processing issue."
"The CFPB is taking immediate action to understand and resolve the situation that has affected hundreds of thousands of consumers. The CFPB will use all appropriate tools at our disposal to help ensure harmed consumers receive relief," Dave Uejio, CFPB acting director, said in a statement.
The firm said in the post that "all duplicate transaction requests have been stopped. Any impacted customers will not be responsible for any fees or other negative financial impact this may have caused."
The drafts did not affect all customers and reflected an unidentified vendor's error. An investigation found there were no signs of system infiltration or hacking, it said.
While some affected customers received payment reversals over the weekend, others could expect payments or reversals to be reflected by Tuesday, the firm said.
The watchdog's response comes amid ongoing scrutiny of mortgage firms in fear of a looming COVID-related foreclosure crisis, Reuters reported last week.