™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Navy Federal declined to release additional data about its loans to CNN that included borrowers’ credit scores or other variables. In addition, most of the Navy Federal applications that were denied are listed as being rejected for reasons other than “credit history.” Pearson said that CNN’s analysis “does not accurately reflect our practices” because it did not account for “major criteria required by any financial institution to approve a mortgage loan.” Those factors included “credit score, available cash deposits and relationship history with lender,” he said.īut that information is not available in the public mortgage data. “Employee training, fair lending statistical testing, third-party evaluations, and compliance reviews are embedded in our lending practices to ensure fairness across the board.” “Navy Federal Credit Union is committed to equal and equitable lending practices and strict adherence to all fair lending laws,” Pearson said. In a statement last week, Navy Federal spokesperson Bill Pearson defended the credit union’s lending practices. “Our goal in filing this lawsuit is to obtain economic justice for Black and Latino borrowers, who, we allege, Navy Federal denied their piece of the American Dream,” attorney Adam Levitt, who is representing one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. The suit seeks to represent a broad class of potential plaintiffs: all Navy Federal minority residential loan applicants from 2018 through the present whose applications were denied, approved at higher interest rates or subject to less favorable terms compared to similar non-minority applicants, as well as those whose applications were processed more slowly than typical. The lawsuit accuses Navy Federal of violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which prohibit lending discrimination based on race. According to the complaint, “she makes approximately $100,000 per year in salary, has good credit, a history of home ownership, and very little debt.” After a month-long process, her mortgage application was denied. Laquita Oliver, a 44-year-old Black resident of Miami Dade County, Florida, works as a capital improvement project analyst and had previously co-owned a small business.The suit says Jacob and her husband sought a mortgage from Navy Federal in October 2023 “to support the purchase of a modest family home” and were denied, before being approved by another lender. Cherelle Jacob, a 40-year-old Black resident of Washington state, and her husband, who is in the armed services, together “make approximately $200,000 in salary, have no debt, have ample savings, and both have ‘exceptional’ credit scores above 800,” according to the complaint.The lawsuit – filed by multiple law firms, including that of civil rights attorney Ben Crump – details the stories of two named plaintiffs whose mortgage applications were denied by Navy Federal: While this type of discrimination may be par for the course for a profit-driven megabank, a member-driven credit union should know better,” Waters added. The nearly 29-percentage-point gap in Navy Federal’s approval rates was the widest of any of the 50 lenders that originated the most mortgage loans last year. The disparity remained even after accounting for variables such as applicants’ income, debt-to-income ratio, property value, and down payment percentage, CNN’s review found. But less than 50% of Black borrowers who applied for the same type of loan were approved. Navy Federal, which lends to military servicemembers, defense personnel, veterans, and their families approved more than 75% of the White borrowers who applied for a new conventional home purchase mortgage in 2022, according to the most recent data available from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Adegbile, a leading civil rights attorney and former commissioner of the US Commission on Civil Rights, to “assess our mortgage lending policies and practices and make recommendations to drive further access to home ownership.” On Tuesday, it announced that it had hired Debo P. The credit union didn’t respond to CNN’s requests for comment this week.
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