How we use complaint data
Each week we send thousands of consumers’ complaints about financial products and services to companies for response. Data from those complaints help us understand the financial marketplace and protect consumers.
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We forward each complaint to the appropriate company for a response.
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We share complaint data with state and federal agencies. We also present a report to Congress twice each year.
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We analyze complaint data to help with our work to supervise companies, enforce federal consumer financial laws, and write better rules and regulations.
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We publish complaints in the Consumer Complaint Database (without personal information).
What we publish in the Consumer Complaint Database
Complaints must meet all of the publication criteria in our policy statement , narrative data policy statement , and narrative scrubbing standard .
1Data that we always share
| Data type | Description |
| Date received | The date the CFPB received the complaint. For example, "05/25/2013" |
| Product | The type of product the consumer identified in the complaint. For example, "Bank account or service" or "Student loan" |
| Sub-product | The type of sub-product the consumer identified in the complaint. For example, "Checking account" or "Non-federal student loan" |
| Issue | The issue the consumer identified in the complaint. For example, "Deposits and withdrawals" or "Repaying your loan" |
| Sub-issue | The sub-issue the consumer identified in the complaint. For example, "Information is not mine" |
| Company public response | The company's optional, public-facing response to a consumer's complaint. Companies provide a public response to the CFPB, for posting on the public database, by selecting a response from a set list of options. |
| Company | The complaint is about this company. For example, "ABC Bank" |
| State | The consumer’s reported mailing state for the complaint |
| ZIP code | Mailing ZIP code provided by the consumer. This field may: i) include the first five digits of a ZIP code; ii) include the first three digits of a ZIP code (if the consumer consented to publication of their complaint narrative); or iii) be blank (if ZIP codes have been submitted with non-numeric values, if there are less than 20,000 people in a given ZIP code, or if the complaint has an address outside of the United States). |
| Tags |
Data that supports easier searching and sorting of complaints submitted by or on behalf of consumers.
For example, complaints where the submitter reports the age of the consumer as 62 years or older are tagged, ‘Older American.’ Complaints submitted by or on behalf of a servicemember or the spouse or dependent of a servicemember are tagged, ‘Servicemember.’ Servicemember includes anyone who is active duty, National Guard, or Reservist, as well as anyone who previously served and is a Veteran or retiree. |
| Consumer consent provided? | Identifies whether the consumer opted in to publish their complaint narrative. We do not publish the narrative unless the consumer consents and consumers can opt-out at any time. |
| Submitted via | How the complaint was submitted to CFPB. For example, "Web or "Phone" |
| Date sent to company | The date the CFPB sent the complaint to the company |
| Company response to consumer | This is how the company responded. For example, "Closed with explanation" |
| Timely response? | Whether the company gave a timely response. For example, "Yes" or "No" |
| Consumer disputed? | Whether the consumer disputed the company’s response |
| Complaint ID | The unique identification number for a complaint |
2Data that we share with the consumer's consent
We share consumer complaint narratives only with consumers' consent. Consumer complaint narrative is the consumer-submitted description of "what happened" from the complaint. Consumers must opt-in to share their narrative. We will not publish the narrative unless the consumer consents, and consumers can opt-out at any time. The CFPB takes reasonable steps to scrub personal information from each complaint that could be used to identify the consumer.
3Data that stays private to the consumer and the company
All personal information, such as names, contact information, account numbers, social security numbers, and supporting documents help the company identify the consumer. This information is not published.
