The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that consumer complaint volume nearly doubled from 91,000 complaints received in 2012 to 163,700 complaints received in 2013.
“Consumer complaints have become central to the work of this agency,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “They enable us to listen to, and amplify, the concerns of any American who wants to be heard. They are also our compass. They make a difference by informing our work and helping us identify and prioritize problems for potential action.”
The 2013 Consumer Response Annual Report can be found at: http://www.consumerfinance.gov/reports/2013-consumer-response-annual-report/
The Dodd-Frank Act, which created the CFPB, established the handling of consumer complaints as an integral part of the CFPB’s work. When the bureau opened its doors on July 21, 2011, it began consumer response operations, accepting consumer complaints about credit cards. Since then, the bureau expanded its complaint handling in 2012 to include complaints about mortgages, bank accounts and services, private student loans, vehicle and other consumer loans and credit reporting. In 2013, it began taking complaints on money transfers, debt collection and payday loans.
The report covers the 163,700 complaints received by the CFPB from Jan. 1, 2013, through Dec. 31, 2013. This is an 80 percent increase over the previous year’s 91,000 complaints. To date, including this year, the CFPB has received more than 310,000 complaints overall. According to the report, the top complaint in 2013 by consumers was in regard to mortgages, accounting for 37 percent of overall complaints. For these approximately 60,000 complaints, consumers were most concerned with problems when they were unable to pay, such as issues relating to loan modifications, collections or foreclosures.
The CFPB said it expects companies to respond to complaints within 15 days and to describe the steps they have taken or plan to take. The CFPB also expects companies to close all but the most complicated complaints within 60 days.
According to the bureau, companies have responded to more than 93 percent of the complaints sent to them for response, and consumers have disputed only 21 percent of those company responses.
Approximately 11 percent of the time, companies respond through non-monetary relief. This includes mortgage foreclosure alternatives so that consumers can keep their homes.
The bureau said it has also seen monetary relief for consumers in about seven percent of complaints. This includes a median amount of $460 for mortgages.
Information about consumer complaints is available to the public through the CFPB’s public Consumer Complaint Database. A complaint is listed in the database after the company responds to the complaint or after the company has had the complaint for 15 calendar days, whichever comes first. If a company demonstrates within 15 days that it has been wrongly identified, no data for that complaint is posted. The database is updated nightly and includes anonymized complaint information. The database enables the public to see what is being complained about and why; and it enables consumer groups to identify troublesome trends.
Complaints inform the bureau’s work and help to identify problems, which then feed into the bureau’s supervision and enforcement prioritization process.