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Enforcement Action Pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions engaging in unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices. The ECOA authorizes the CFPB and the DOJ to take action against creditors engaging in illegal discrimination. The CFPB is issuing a consent order as an administrative action covering both the deceptive marketing practices and the illegal discrimination. The DOJ’s settlement on discrimination was filed in the U.S. District Court for District of Utah. The CFPB’s order requires GE Capital: · End deceptive marketing practices: GE Capital must cease its deceptive marketing practices. GE Capital ended all telephone-based enrollments for all of the add-on products involved in today’s action in October 2012. GE Capital is prohibited from marketing or offering these products by telephone until it submits a compliance plan to the Bureau. · End illegal discrimination: GE Capital must end all discriminatory credit practices. GE Capital has included qualified customers who prefer to communicate in Spanish and customers with a mailing address in Puerto Rico in the settlement offer since March 2012. GE Capital completely discontinued the statement credit offer in March 2012. · Provide $225 million to harmed consumers: GE Capital must refund $56 million to the approximately 638,000 consumers who were affected by its deceptive marketing of the credit card add-on products. GE Capital must also provide $169 million in relief to about 108,000 borrowers excluded from debt relief offers because of their national origin. The $169 million represents the value of the offer that the consumer did not receive plus interest and indirect damages. · Conveniently provide consumer relief: Consumers do not need to take action to obtain their relief. If the consumers still have credit cards with GE Capital, they have received or will receive a credit to their accounts or a check. If they no longer have credit cards with GE Capital, they will receive or have received a check in the mail or have charged-off balances reduced by the amount of the relief. If the relief is greater than the consumer’s existing balance, the consumer will receive a check for the excess. · Notify credit reporting agencies of new information: For those consumers who did not receive the debt relief offers, GE Capital will work with credit reporting agencies to ensure that any negative information associated with the consumer’s GE Capital accounts as a result of these violations will be deleted from their credit history. · Forgive debt of accounts that did not receive debt relief offers: For the customers that did not receive debt relief offers because they preferred to communicate in Spanish or had a mailing address in Puerto Rico, if GE Capital had written off or sold their debt, that debt will be forgiven. · Pay a $3.5 million penalty: For its deceptive credit card marketing, GE Capital will make a $3.5 million penalty payment to the CFPB’s Civil Penalty Fund. With respect to the illegal discrimination, the Bureau is not assessing penalties based on a number of factors, including that the company self-reported the violation, self-initiated remediation for the harm done to affected consumers, and fully cooperated with the Bureau’s investigation. The Bureau has ongoing supervisory authority over GE Capital and will continue to conduct examinations of GE Capital to ensure its compliance with federal consumer financial law. The full text of the CFPB’s Consent Order is available at: http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201406_cfpb_consent-order_synchrony-bank.pdf