The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finished last week with notable actions against a captive finance company and a credit bureau with total penalties against the companies approaching $30 million.

Focused on the same topic the CFPB used to craft a lawsuit against Experian, the bureau said it is taking action against Equifax for what the regulator indicated has been failure to conduct proper investigations of consumer disputes.

Meanwhile, the CFPB also ordered the American Honda Finance Corporation to pay $12.8 million for reporting inaccurate information that affected the credit reports of 300,000 people who drive Honda and Acura vehicles.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the bureau said Honda’s captive finance company deferred certain monthly payments. However, the CFPB said found that the company told credit reporting companies that contract holders were delinquent when they should have been reported as current.

The CFPB said its investigation also found multiple other credit furnishing accuracy and dispute investigation failures.

The CFPB is ordering American Honda Finance to pay $10.3 million in redress to harmed customers and to pay a $2.5 million civil money penalty.

“Honda Finance used sloppy practices that smeared the credit reports of hundreds of thousands of its customers,” CFPB director Rohit Chopra said in a news release. “False accusations on a credit report can have serious implications for Americans seeking a job, housing, or a loan.”

The CFPB found that American Honda Finance violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act because the captive furnished “false and harmful” information that ended up on consumers’ credit reports.

The regulator said the captive also failed to conduct appropriate investigations of customer disputes. Specifically, the company harmed consumers by:

—Damaging borrowers’ credit reports during a national emergency: During the COVID-19 crisis, the CFPB said American Honda Finance allowed consumers to defer payments and promised to continue reporting those consumers as current to credit reporting companies.

Instead, the regulator said American Honda Finance reported those consumers as delinquent when they did not make payments that were not required during the deferral period.

Further, American Honda Finance continued furnishing inaccurate information even after determining several types of information was inaccurate, according to the CFPB, which said these actions harmed approximately 300,000 consumers.

—Failing to investigate disputes: The bureau stated American Honda Finance failed to properly investigate disputes about information it furnished to credit reporting companies.

Additionally, the CFPB said the captive failed to send the results of investigations to credit reporting companies and consumers, when required.

The CFPB’s order requires American Honda Finance to:

—Pay $10.3 million to harmed consumers and take steps to correct its prior erroneous reporting.

—Pay a $2.5 million fine to the CFPB’s victims relief fund.

The CFPB pointed out it has taken a previous enforcement action against American Honda Finance.

In 2015, the CFPB and Department of Justice took action against American Honda Finance for illegal discrimination.

Officials recapped the captive charged African American, Hispanic, and Asian and Pacific Islander individuals higher dealer markups for their auto financing than non-Hispanic white applicants. The CFPB said these markups were without regard to the creditworthiness of the applicant.

American Honda Finance agreed to pay $24 million in redress for violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

Equifax to pay $15M over reporting errors

Meanwhile, Equifax found itself as a penalty recipient from the bureau at the end of last week, too.

The CFPB said it determined Equifax committed multiple infractions, including:

—Ignored consumer documents and evidence submitted with disputes

—Allowed previously deleted inaccuracies to be reinserted into credit reports

—Provided confusing and conflicting letters to consumers about the results of its investigations

—Used flawed software code which led to inaccurate consumer credit scores.

The order requires Equifax to comply with federal law, and Equifax must pay a $15 million civil money penalty, which will be deposited into the CFPB’s victims relief fund.

“Equifax failed in its basic duty to investigate and resolve consumer disputes about inaccurate information on their credit reports,” CFPB director Rohit Chopra said in another release. “Today’s order requires Equifax to pay a civil penalty and follow federal laws on handling credit reporting disputes.”

The CFPB said found Equifax violated the FCRA’s requirements for investigating and processing consumer disputes and assuring maximum possible accuracy of information on its consumer reports.

Officials noted they also found that Equifax violated the law by using ineffective systems and flawed processes and excessively deferring to furnishers to address disputes.

Specifically, the CFPB said it determined Equifax harmed consumers by:

—Failing to thoroughly investigate consumer disputes: Equifax’s process for submitting disputes limits the ability of consumers to fully and accurately describe their disputes, according to the CFPB.

In many cases, officials said Equifax also failed to consider relevant information submitted by consumers, sometimes not looking at the information at all.

Then, after Equifax forwarded information about a dispute to a furnisher, the CFPB said the credit bureau did not meaningfully consider whether the furnisher’s response made sense, sometimes ignoring information it had that contradicted the furnisher’s response.

Finally, officials learned the resulting letters Equifax sent to consumers sometimes contained confusing or contradictory statements, such as both “this has been verified as accurate” and “this item has been deleted.”

—Putting previously deleted errors back on credit reports and failing to block identity theft related information: Officials indicated Equifax did not have systems to detect information that was previously removed and block that information from again appearing on the consumer’s credit report.

In addition, the CFPB said Equifax also had no process to identify situations where a consumer is forced to send another dispute about the same inaccurate information because Equifax failed to correct the information the first time, or because Equifax reported information that had previously been corrected.

“Equifax’s policies limited consumers’ ability to dispute inaccurate information being put on their credit report. Finally, Equifax reported credit information that it should have blocked because the information resulted from identity theft,” officials said.

—Sharing inaccurate credit scores and data about consumers with finance companies and lenders: The CFPB found that coding errors in Equifax’s internal software caused the company to miscalculate and share inaccurate credit scores for several hundred thousand consumers.

Equifax also reported the same credit accounts multiple times for more than 50,000 consumers, according to the CFPB’s investigation.