About the Data

MoneyWatchUSA is built on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Consumer Complaint Database, a public record of complaints the CFPB has received about consumer financial products and services and forwarded to companies for response. Every complaint includes the product, the issue, the consumer's state, the company, and how the company responded.

What a complaint is

A complaint is a statement by a consumer that they had a problem with a financial company. It is not a finding, a lawsuit, or proof that the company did anything wrong. The CFPB publishes complaints after the company responds or after 15 days, whichever comes first.

What we add

The raw database has no company-level summaries. We compute them: complaints in the last 12 months, year-over-year change, the most common product and problem, the distribution across states, and the share of complaints the company answered on time.

Reading the numbers fairly

A large bank will have more complaints than a small one simply because it has more customers. Wherever possible we show volume alongside context, and state pages are normalized per capita. We do not publish "worst company" rankings.

Not advice

Nothing here is financial, legal or investment advice, and no product is recommended. For help with a specific dispute, the authoritative route is the CFPB itself at consumerfinance.gov.