On February 27, 2024, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) announced that it entered into a consent order with a San Francisco-based financial services company resolving allegations that the company’s handling of consumer complaints violated California’s Consumer Financial Protection Law (CCFPL). The company, which partners with regional banks to provide mobile banking services to those banks’ customers, agreed to pay a $2.5 million penalty and to implement process changes related to its handling of consumer complaints.
The consent order comes at the heels of an investigation that begun in 2021, and resolves DFPI’s allegations that the company failed to respond to complaints in a timely manner and made other errors in its response to complaints in violation of the CCFPL. The DFPI noted that while “the number of mistakes during the Investigation Period was relatively small in comparison to the overall number of consumer complaints received,” it believed that those mistakes “were important to the affected consumers.”
The company cooperated with the DFPI investigation and has already begun remediation efforts to improve how it handles customer complaints. In addition to paying a $2.5 million penalty, the company also agreed to (1) provide customer service support 24 hours a day, seven days a week; (2) provide sufficient customer service support staffing; and (3) revise its customer service training and related policies and procedures to “maintain the accurate, prompt and proper handling of consumer complaints.”
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