James B. Nutter & Co. Agrees to Consent Decree with FTC

The mortgage banking company James B. Nutter & Co. has agreed to a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission to maintain adequate data security procedures to protect its customers' financial information. FTC did not fine the Kansas City, Mo. company because an e-mail incident that sparked FTC's attention five years ago did not involve the release of sensitive personal information. "Nothing was compromised," said president and chief executive James Nutter Jr. He noted that the software problem was fixed and no other problems have occurred. Working "very diligently with the agency, "we were able to resolve some issues relating to data security that were raised by [an FTC] audit," Mr. Nutter said. As part of the agreement, JBN agreed to hire an independent auditor to assess its data security procedures every two years for 10 years.