The CFPB Released its March 2017 Complaint Report

According to the Monthly Complaint Report (Vol. 22) as of April 1, 2017, the CFPB has handled about 1,163,200 complaints, including approximately 28,300 complaints in March 2017.

Complaints about student loans showed the greatest percentage increase from January – March 2016 (773 complaints) to January – March 2017 (3,284 complaints) representing about a 325 percent increase.  The CFPB notes that “Part of this year-to-year increase can be attributed to the CFPB updating its student loan intake form to accept complaints about federal student loan servicing in February 2016.”  Payday loan complaints showed the greatest percentage decrease from January – March 2016 (417 complaints) to January – March 2017 (298 complaints), representing about a 29 percent decline. Debt collection complaints represented more than any other type of complaint, representing about 8,711 of the total cumulative complaints (28,300) in March 2017.   Debt collection, credit reporting complaints and mortgage were the top three most-complained-about consumer financial products and services, collectively representing about 65 percent of complaints submitted in March 2017.

This month the CFPB spotlighted student loans.  The CFPB handled approximately 44,400 student loan complaints since July 21, 2011 representing 4 percent of total complaints.  The most common issues are dealing with the lender or servicer (64%), not being able to repay the loan (33%), and getting a loan (3%).  The breakdown of complaints by type of loan was non-federal student loans at 64% and federal student loans at 36%.

For this month’s complaint report Nevada and the Las Vegas metro area is the CFPBs geographical spotlight.  As of April 1, 2017, about 14,600 complaints were from Nevada consumers, of which about 10,800 were from the Las Vegas metro area.