What the CFPB Is — and How to File a Complaint Against a Lender or Collector

What the CFPB Is and What Laws It Enforces

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is a federal regulatory agency created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. It began operating in 2011 and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. Its statutory mandate is to ensure that consumer financial markets operate fairly and that consumers have access to information they need to make informed financial decisions.

The CFPB holds primary enforcement authority over several major federal consumer financial laws, including:

• The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) — governs third-party debt collectors
• The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) — governs credit bureaus and data furnishers
• The Truth in Lending Act (TILA) — governs disclosures on loans and credit products
• The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) — governs mortgage servicing and settlement
• The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) — prohibits discrimination in credit decisions
• The Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA) — governs electronic payments and unauthorized transfers
• The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) — governs privacy of consumer financial information

Which Companies the CFPB Regulates

The CFPB has supervisory authority over banks and credit unions with more than $10 billion in assets, and over all nonbank entities that offer consumer financial products and services regardless of size — including mortgage companies, payday lenders, debt collectors, credit reporting agencies, student loan servicers, and money transfer companies. For banks and credit unions with $10 billion or less in assets, the CFPB can still enforce consumer financial laws but shares supervisory responsibility with the primary federal bank regulator for that institution.

What Types of Problems Can Be Complained About

The CFPB's complaint system accepts complaints about a wide range of consumer financial products and services. The major categories currently accepted include:

• Checking or savings accounts
• Credit cards and prepaid cards
• Credit reporting and other consumer reporting
• Debt collection
• Money transfers, virtual currency, and money services
• Mortgages
• Student loans
• Vehicle loans or leases
• Personal loans and payday loans

Within each category, the complaint system allows selection of the specific type of problem — billing errors, incorrect information on a credit report, harassment by a debt collector, failure to provide requested information, unauthorized charges, and many others. The specificity of the problem description affects how the complaint is routed and how the company is expected to respond.

How to File a Complaint

The CFPB's online complaint portal is the primary filing method and is available at consumerfinance.gov/complaint. The process requires creating a CFPB account with a name, email address, and phone number. Once registered, the complaint form walks through the following steps:

1. Select the product or service category the complaint concerns
2. Select the specific type of problem within that category
3. Describe what happened in a free-text narrative field — chronological, factual description of the specific events
4. Describe the desired resolution
5. Identify the company the complaint is against
6. Provide contact information and submit

Supporting documents — account statements, correspondence, contracts, payment records — can be attached to the complaint and strengthen the documentation. The narrative description should be factual and specific: dates, amounts, specific communications, and what the company did or failed to do. Vague or conclusory descriptions are harder for the company to respond to meaningfully.

Complaints can also be submitted by calling (855) 411-CFPB (2372), which is available in more than 180 languages. Mail submission is available at Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, PO Box 27170, Washington, DC 20038.

What Happens After a Complaint Is Filed

Once a complaint is submitted, the CFPB sends it to the identified company, typically within one to three days. The company is required to respond within 15 calendar days of receiving the complaint. If the company requires additional time, it must acknowledge the complaint and indicate the estimated timeline, with a final response due within 60 days.

The complainant receives email updates as the complaint moves through the process and can log in to check status at any time using the assigned complaint ID. When the company responds, the complainant has 60 days to review the response and provide feedback — whether the response resolved the issue, partially resolved it, or left the problem unresolved. This feedback goes to the company and is factored into the CFPB's aggregate analysis of company complaint response quality.

The CFPB may also share complaint information with other federal, state, and local regulatory agencies where relevant. If the complaint indicates a potential violation by a company that another agency is better positioned to address — the FTC for certain debt collection issues, a state banking regulator, or a state attorney general — the CFPB forwards the complaint accordingly.

The Public Consumer Complaint Database

The CFPB maintains a publicly searchable Consumer Complaint Database that publishes information about complaints it has received. The database includes the company name, product type, issue type, state, and the company's response status. Personally identifiable information is removed before publication. With the consumer's consent, the database also publishes the consumer's narrative description of what happened, after scrubbing identifiers.

The database is searchable by company name, product, issue, date range, and state. It provides information about the volume and nature of complaints any particular company has received, the company's response rate, and the share of consumers who reported the response resolved their issue. This publicly available information serves as one reference point when researching a financial company's complaint history.

The database is available at consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints.

What a CFPB Complaint Does Not Do

Understanding what a CFPB complaint does not accomplish is as important as understanding what it does. The CFPB complaint process is not a substitute for legal action and does not produce legally binding outcomes against the company in any individual case.

A CFPB complaint does not:

• Compel a company to provide any specific remedy to the complainant
• Result in a fine or penalty against the company based on any individual complaint
• Constitute a legal proceeding or produce legally enforceable findings
• Substitute for filing a lawsuit in court to recover damages
• Stop collection activity, garnishment, or other creditor actions while under review

The value of the complaint process is primarily in creating a documented record of the problem that the company is required to address, generating regulatory attention to the company's practices through aggregated complaint data, and producing a company response on the record that may be useful in subsequent legal proceedings. For consumers whose rights have been violated and who seek damages, a private lawsuit under the applicable statute — the FDCPA, FCRA, or TILA, for example — is a separate remedy with separate private rights of action.

When to Use a Different Agency Instead

The CFPB is not the right agency for every type of financial complaint. Several other agencies have jurisdiction over specific complaint types that are outside or shared with CFPB authority:

• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): For identity theft-related matters and certain scams — report at reportfraud.ftc.gov. The FTC also maintains the Do Not Call registry and handles complaints about unwanted calls.
• State attorney general: For violations of state consumer protection laws, state debt collection statutes, or predatory lending practices that may violate state law. State attorneys general have independent enforcement authority in most states.
• State insurance commissioner: For complaints about insurance products — health, auto, homeowners — which are not within CFPB jurisdiction.
• State banking regulator: For complaints about state-chartered banks and credit unions that fall outside CFPB supervisory jurisdiction.
• Office of the Comptroller of the Currency: For complaints about national banks (those with "National" in the name or "N.A." after it) regarding matters not handled by the CFPB.