by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
FEDERAL COURT, Sept 10 – Synovus Bank, with a track record of disparate lending and consumer complaints, now proposes to cash out and merge with also disparate Nashville-based Pinnacle.
Inner City Press requested the application from Pinnacle's regulator at the Tennessee Commissioner of Financial Institutions. On September 10 their associate general counsel responded, "it does not appear that you are a citizen of this state, and therefore the Tennessee Public Records Act does not apply to this request pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 10-7-503(a)(2)(A) and Rule 0180-34-.03(5) of the Rules of the Department of Financial Institutions."
So Pinnacle, supervised by a state regulator that answers only to its own "citizens," wants to expand and impact people its regulator does not answer to. We'll have more on this.
Fair Finance Watch, as the Federal Reserve memorialized, has noted "disparities in denial rates and home mortgage originations to African Americans and/or Hispanics, as compared to whites, in certain markets. The commenter also noted a complaint filed with the CFPB against Synovus Bank relating to collecting on a debt allegedly not owed."
Since then, Synovus showed up in the criminal "We Build the Wall" prosecution in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, covered by Inner City Press, and in NSF investigations.
Fair Finance Watch has reviewed the just-released 2024 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data of Synovus and finds that while it made 3.18 loans to whites for each denial to whites, it made only 1.7 loans to African Americans for each denial to African Americans. We will have more on these troubling disparities, including under the Community Reinvestment Act.
Public notice says comment can be made to the Tennessee Commissioner of Financial Institutions - or, by implication, do they only consider comments from Tennessee citizens? Having now FOIA-ed the Fed, we aim to have more on this. For those pointing to state regulators, including state AGs, this type of parochialism undermines them as an alternative. Hence FFW's new branch project, occasioned by FDIC lawlessness.
Watch this site.
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