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CFPB: One Million Complaints Handled and Counting

Complaint BHSlightly more than five years after opening its doors in July 2011, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has handled more than one million complaints.

The Bureau surpassed the one million complaint-handled milestone this month, according to a release announcing the September 2016 Monthly Complaint Report (Volume 15), published on Tuesday.

“Since opening our doors in 2011, we have handled over one million complaints from consumers about their problems with financial products and services,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Not only have we achieved substantial relief for consumers, but hearing directly from consumers is fundamental to our mission. We can better protect all consumers because of what we learn from those who have submitted complaints and shared their experiences with us.”

The CFPB began accepting complaints about credit cards when it opened its doors in July 2011. The Bureau later expanded its complaint handling to include other areas of finance; mortgages were added early in 2013. Other categories include credit cards, mortgages, bank accounts and services, private student loans, vehicle and other consumer loans, credit reporting, money transfers, debt collection, and payday loans.

Once the most complained-about financial product to the CFPB, mortgages have since been surpassed by debt collection on the list. Nearly a quarter of complaints from consumers to the Bureau have been about mortgage products (244,008 out of the one million), second only to debt collection’s 264,123 complaints. Together, those two categories make up more than half of the one million complaints consumers have made to the Bureau in five years. Credit reporting was the third-most complained about financial product, logging 163,651 complaints.

With a total of 4,310 complaints in August (a 10 percent increase from July), mortgages ranked third behind debt collection (9,746) and credit reporting (5,723) as the top complained-about categories for the month. Mortgages rank second on the list of average number of complaints received since the CFPB’s launch, with 4,206, behind only debt collection (6,871).

The Bureau received a total of 28,651 complaints across all financial products in August, which is nearly double the agency’s monthly average of complaints received since its inception (15,845). Approximately 15 percent of complaints received by the CFPB in August 2015 were mortgage-related.

Click here to view the CFPB’s complete report.

About Author: Kendall Baer

Kendall Baer is a Baylor University graduate with a degree in news editorial journalism and a minor in marketing. She is fluent in both English and Italian, and studied abroad in Florence, Italy. Apart from her work as a journalist, she has also managed professional associations such as Association of Corporate Counsel, Commercial Real Estate Women, American Immigration Lawyers Association, and Project Management Institute for Association Management Consultants in Houston, Texas. Born and raised in Texas, Baer now works as the online editor for DS News.
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