- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
- Complaint
- Product
- Issue
- Company response
- Timely response
- Closed with relief
- The three nationwide credit bureaus
- Why company size matters
- Not financial advice
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
- The U.S. federal agency that supervises banks, lenders and other financial companies for consumer protection. It runs the public Consumer Complaint Database this site is built on.
- Complaint
- A submission by a consumer stating that they had a problem with a financial product or service. The CFPB forwards it to the company for a response. A complaint is one person's account — not a ruling, a lawsuit, or proof the company did anything wrong.
- Product
- The category of financial product a complaint is about — credit reporting, credit card, checking or savings account, mortgage, debt collection, student loan, money transfer, and so on.
- Issue
- The specific problem within a product — for example "incorrect information on your report", "managing an account", "struggling to pay your loan", or "problem with a purchase shown on your statement".
- Company response
- How the company resolved the complaint, in the CFPB's categories: closed with explanation, closed with monetary relief, closed with non-monetary relief, closed without relief, or (rarely) untimely response.
- Timely response
- Whether the company responded to the CFPB within the required window (generally 15 days, with up to 60 for a final response). A high timely-response rate means the company answers on schedule; it says nothing about whether the consumer was satisfied.
- Closed with relief
- The company gave the consumer something — money back or a fee waived (monetary relief), or a correction, account change or apology (non-monetary relief). We show the share of a company's complaints closed with either kind.
- The three nationwide credit bureaus
- Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. They receive far more complaints than any bank because credit-report disputes are the single largest complaint category — this reflects volume, not that they are "the worst".
- Why company size matters
- A bank with tens of millions of customers will have more complaints than a small credit union simply because it has more customers. Raw complaint counts should always be read with company size in mind.
- Not financial advice
- MoneyWatchUSA reports what people complained about. It does not recommend or rate financial products, and nothing here is financial, legal or investment advice. For a specific dispute, file with the CFPB directly.
More on how to read these figures on the About the Data page and the FAQ.