CFPB's New Financial Products Complaint Site Goes Live Today

Starting today consumers will be able to track complaints about products and services levied by other consumers against some 450 financial services companies.  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will go live with what they are calling the nation's largest public database of federal consumer financial complaints, covering some 90,000 individual complaints regarding mortgages, student loans, bank accounts and services, 

The searchable data base, an expansion of an earlier complaint site which covered only about 19,000 credit card complaints, includes information on what customers complained about, when, and why as well as how the company responded to the complaint, whether the response was timely and if the consumer disputed it. There is no identifying consumer data included in the data base.

"By sharing these complaints with the public, we are creating greater transparency in consumer financial products and services," said CFPB Director Richard Cordray at a field hearing in Des Moines, Iowa, where he announced the expansion of the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database. "The database is good for consumers and it is also good for honest businesses. We believe the marketplace of ideas can do great things with this data."

The database includes more than one million data points and in many cases, it includes a sub-category of products. For example, for mortgages it includes reverse mortgages, conventional fixed mortgages, conventional adjustable mortgages, and home equity loans or lines of credit.

Consumers will be able to easily track, sort, search, and download information and consumers can build their own visualizations, charts, and graphs.  The data can also be embedded on other websites and shared through social media.  The data is available via application programming interface so consumers can expect smart phone apps to be available soon that will allow new uses of the data on the fly. 

Complaints will be added to the live database, which updates daily, only after 15 days or after the company responds to the complaint. CFPB also first verifies that there is a commercial relationship between the complaining customer and the company.   The live database updates daily; so as the CFPB handles more complaints, more will be added. When the CFPB accepts consumer complaints about other financial products and services, they will be put on the database after a period of time. For example, credit reporting complaints, which the CFPB recently began to accept, will be included in the database in the near future. 

Consumers can view and interact with the new database at http://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaintdatabase/.