citizens bank has agreed to pay a 9 million penalty to resolve a regulators allegations that it failed to adequately respond to customers credit card disputes and fraud claims the us consumer financial protection bureau said tuesday that it has reached a settlement with the citizens financial group subsidiary that ties up its 2020 lawsuit accusing citizen bank of violating the truth in lending act the regulators suit alleged that citizens bank improperly denied customers fraud and error reports and refused to provide refunds citizens bank also failed to reasonably investigate and resolve billing error notices and unauthorized use claims by making customers jump through burdensome and unnecessary hoops to report fraud the cfpb said citizens bank further failed to fully credit customers accounts when unauthorized use and billing errors arose by sometimes declining to refund finance charges or fees owed to customers the agency alleged the bank said in its own statement that the conduct at issue impacted a small subset of its credit card customers nearly eight years ago citizens bank said it has selfidentified the errors which affected about 2 of its credit card customers in 2015 and alerted the cfpb while voluntarily launching remediation efforts that were completed soon afterward while citizens continues to disagree with the cfpbs stance with respect to these longresolved issues which were selfidentified and voluntarily addressed years ago we are pleased to put this matter behind us polly klane the banks general counsel said in a statement the parent companys shares rose 24 to 2785 in early trading