Military Members’ Complaints Rise at CFPB

There has been a sharp increase in the number of complaints received by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from military service members between 2012 and 2018, according to an annual report by CFPB’s Office of Servicemember Affairs (OSA). The latest report focuses on the 48,800 military complaints received between April 1, 2017 to August 31, 2018.

By volume, the states with the most servicemember complaints were California, Florida, and Texas. Nearly two-thirds of all complaints were about credit/consumer reporting and debt collection, while only 0.9 percent of the complaints were about payday loans and 0.3 percent about title loans.

The report highlighted the fact that “complaints about payday lending declined more than 26% between 2016 and 2017,” and for the past few years, “servicemember complaints about payday loans, as a percentage of the total complaint volume, is now equal with non-servicemembers.”

In addition, the report highlighted some of the emerging issues for servicemembers in the financial marketplace, which includes rising medical debt, which is “consistently the category most cited for having past-due bill issues.” The report also took aim at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has taken “aggressive collection action” to collect on its debts.