MyBlack^® Wealth

Too Big To Be Fair, Citi, Wells, BofA & JPM Chase Disparate in Subprime Loans in 2009

Source: Inner City Press

NEW YORK, April 11 -- In the first study of the just-released 2009 mortgage lending data, Bronx-based Fair Finance Watch has found that the Big Four survivors of the banking meltdown, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, continued with high cost loans and had worse disparities by race and ethnicity in denials and higher-cost lending than before 2009, Fair Finance Watch concluded. The just released data show that Citigroup confined African Americans to higher-cost loans above the Federally defined subprime rate spread 2.25 times more frequently than whites, according to Fair Finance Watch. Citigroup confined Latinos to higher-cost loans above the rate spread 1.72 times more frequently than whites, the data show. 2009 is the sixth year in which the data distinguishes which loans are higher cost, over a federally-defined rate spread. JPMorgan Chase was even more disparate to Latinos, confined them to higher-cost loans 1.98 times more frequently than whites, almost as pronounced as its disparity between African-Americans and whites, 2.17. HSBC, perhaps due to its shrinking, some say dying, business had disparities of 2.57 for African Americans and 1.61 for Latinos.

Read Article