Do Consumers Need the CFPB?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau helps protect consumers in the financial marketplace, which includes banks, debt collectors, mortgage and vehicle lenders, credit card companies, credit bureaus, payday lenders, student loan servicers, and other financial actors. The CFPB protects all consumers by implementing fair, clear and transparent rules to protect consumers in the financial marketplace.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau helps protect consumers in the financial marketplace, which includes banks, debt collectors, mortgage and vehicle lenders, credit card companies, credit bureaus, payday lenders, student loan servicers, and other financial actors. The CFPB protects all consumers by implementing fair, clear and transparent rules to protect consumers in the financial marketplace.

It also helps individual consumers who are having a problem with a particular bank, lender or other financial company, by helping consumers get a response from the company. The CFPB has helped consumers receive more than 750,000 responses from companies.

Consumers can submit a complaint to the CFPB regarding a variety of financial entities. In 2016, consumers submitted:

  • 28,000 complaints about banks,
  • 51,000 complaints about mortgage companies,
  • 88,000 complaints about debt collectors,
  • 26,000 complaints about credit card companies,
  • 54,000 complaints about credit bureaus,
  • 12,000 complaints about student loans, and
  • 7,300 complaints about pay day lenders.

To learn more about the complaints consumers have submitted to the CFPB, read the 2016 report or go here for a list of U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s reports analyzing consumer complaints.

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Authors

Elizabeth Ridlington

Associate Director and Senior Policy Analyst, Frontier Group

Elizabeth Ridlington is associate director and senior policy analyst with Frontier Group. She focuses primarily on global warming, toxics, health care and clean vehicles, and has written dozens of reports on these and other subjects. Elizabeth graduated with honors from Harvard with a degree in government. She joined Frontier Group in 2002. She lives in Northern California with her son.

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