CFPB
Est. 2011
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Primary source. 14 million complaints. Every institution ComplaintRate scores.
Parent
Independent federal agency
Jurisdiction
All consumer financial products and services
Headline
14M+ complaints · 4,977 institutions scored · Primary ComplaintRate data source
What the CFPB is
The CFPB was created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, following the 2008 financial crisis. It consolidated federal consumer financial protection authority — previously scattered across seven agencies — into a single body. The CFPB began operations in July 2011.
What the CFPB does
- Accepts and processes consumer complaints about financial products and services
- Forwards complaints to institutions and publishes outcomes in the public database
- Issues rules governing mortgages, credit cards, student loans, payday loans, and debt collection
- Brings enforcement actions against institutions for consumer harm, including civil money penalties
- Publishes supervisory guidance and examination findings
- Maintains the public Consumer Complaint Database — the primary input to ComplaintRate
Why ComplaintRate uses CFPB data
The CFPB Consumer Complaint Database is the foundational data source for ComplaintRate. It contains every consumer complaint forwarded to a financial institution since 2011 — product category, issue type, company response, timeliness of response, and whether the consumer received any relief. ComplaintRate normalises this raw complaint count against FDIC deposit-weighted estimated customer base to produce a complaints-per-1,000-customers rate that makes comparison between institutions of different sizes meaningful for the first time.
What CFPB data means for you
When an institution appears in the CFPB database, it means a consumer filed a formal federal complaint, the CFPB determined it was within scope, and the institution was required to respond. A high complaint rate does not mean the complaints were all valid — it means a disproportionate number of consumers had serious enough problems to file federal complaints. The CFPB timely response rate measures whether institutions respond within the required 15-day window.
CFPB fields in ComplaintRate database
complaints_per_1ktotal_complaintstimely_response_ratecfpb_has_active_actioncfpb_active_actionscfpb_most_recent_actioncfpb_total_relief_usdOther data sources
ComplaintRate.com is an independent data publisher and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any U.S. federal agency. Data sourced from publicly available government databases.