Bureau Report Summarizes Consumer Complaints for 2017

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released its annual report on consumer complaints this week. The report notes that the agency fields more than 24,000 calls each month and handled over 320,000 total complaints last year. Since its inception, the CFPB has received more than 1.4 million consumer complaints.

The Bureau began taking consumer complaints for credit cards in 2011 and has slowly phased in other sectors of financial services. The majority of the complaints are lodged via the agency’s website (81%), with telephones (5%) and referrals from other regulatory agencies (8%) also contributing significantly.

Since its creation, the categories with the highest number of complaints are debt collection (377,000), mortgages (301,000), credit and consumer reporting (281,000), credit cards (138,000), and checking and savings accounts (132,000). In 2017, credit and consumer reporting topped the complaint list. Much of this could be attributed to the heightened awareness and scrutiny of credit bureaus following the massive data breach last summer at Equifax.

Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney is scheduled to speak with the House Financial Services Committee on April 11th regarding the agency’s operations.