Two financial lenders involved in class-action lawsuits brought by black consumers are in talks with the plaintiffs’ lawyers about their auto-lending practices.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s Bank One unit and Bank of America Corp. have been talking with lawyers, but neither side has indicated that there will be a settlement, reported The Wall Street Journal.

The lawsuits charge that car dealers tend to mark up loans more frequently and aggressively with black borrowers than with white borrowers and that the banks’ policies enable the discrimination.

According to the report, both Bank One and Bank of America allow dealers to add as much as three percentage points to the annual rate the banks would offer the consumer. Before its merger with Bank One, J.P. Morgan Chase lowered its maximum markup charged by its finance units to 2.5 percent.

This action was taken voluntarily and around the same time that General Motors Corp.’s finance arm agreed to a 2.5 percent limit as part of a lawsuit settlement in 2004.

Before merging with J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank One’s automotive-lending business had about $13 billion in receivables a year. The plaintiffs’ lawyers in this case were also lead lawyers in the cases against GMAC and Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp. in recent years.