Dive Brief:
- The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is fining Citibank $30 million, saying it repeatedly violated holding period regulations on foreclosed real estate.
- The regulator flagged Citibank's "deficient" other real estate owned (OREO) practices in 2015, according to court documents filed last week. The bank pledged to correct the violations but submitted "numerous untimely requests to extend the holding period," as recently as August 2019, according to the filing.
- "Since identifying the issue, we have strengthened controls, processes and procedures to ensure the timely disposition of these assets," Citibank said in an emailed statement to The Wall Street Journal.
Dive Insight:
National banks such as Citibank can hold onto foreclosed property for up to five years.
In 2017, two years after first noticing issues, the regulator re-assessed Citibank's practices, saying its "internal controls governing OREO remain decentralized, ineffective, and inadequate," according to the court filing.
"In some instances, we did not meet [the OREO] requirement," Citibank said in a statement, according to American Banker.
Citibank allegedly committed more than 200 violations between April 2017 and August 2019. But it has "significantly reduced its inventory of OREO assets" in the past year, the OCC's filing indicated.
"In assessing this civil money penalty, the OCC found the bank failed to meet its commitment to implement corrective actions, resulting in additional violations," the agency said, according to American Banker.
The OCC said it will continue to monitor the bank's progress.
