Members of Congress pressed the CEO of the nation’s largest credit union for answers about racial disparities in its mortgage lending during a Capitol Hill meeting Thursday but said they left unsatisfied with her responses.
Mary McDuffie, the CEO of Navy Federal Credit Union, met with three members of the Congressional Black Caucus who have demanded answers in the wake of CNN’s reporting on racial disparities in the lender’s mortgage approvals.
It’s the latest example of congressional scrutiny for Navy Federal, which has more than 13 million members and lends to military servicemembers, defense personnel, veterans and their families.
“We’re trying to achieve the goal of closing the racial wealth gap in America,” said Rep. Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat, after meeting with McDuffie. “You cannot do that with practices like this that deny equal opportunity to homeownership.”
A CNN investigation published in December found that Navy Federal approved more than 75% of the White borrowers who applied for a new conventional home purchase mortgage in 2022 while approving less than 50% of Black borrowers who applied for the same type of loan, according to the most recent federal data available.
The nearly 29-percentage-point gap in Navy Federal’s approval rates was the widest of any of the 50 lenders that originated the most mortgage loans in 2022. The disparity remained even after accounting for variables such as applicants’ income, debt-to-income ratio and property value, CNN’s review found.
McDuffie met for about an hour Thursday with Horsford, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance; and Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California.
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