CFPB Finds Who Is More Likely to File Complaints

Lower-income communities, mostly black and Hispanic, were more likely to file complaints about credit reports, identity theft, and criminal servicing with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), according to a report by the agency every Thursday (Sept. 23). Press release.

The press release stated that higher-income, mostly white, non-Hispanic communities were more likely to file complaints about lending and servicing operations.

Asian-American and Pacific islander communities reported fewer complaints about non-standard service, according to the press release.

The results were based on around 1 million consumer complaints filed with the CFPB between 2018 and 2020, the press release said. The report used an approach to classify complaints based on demographics by matching relevant consumers with demographics from the US census at the census level.

“Today’s report confirms that communities’ experiences and concerns with consumer financial products and services vary by race and wealth,” said Dave Uejio, associate director of the CFPB, in the press release. “Our consumer complaint data is a critical tool to understand different consumer experiences, including across ethnic and economic boundaries.”

The report found that low-income populations submit around 30% more complaints than communities with around 100% of their region’s median income, the press release said.

And census areas with the largest proportion of black residents had twice as many complaint rates as communities that had almost no black residents, the press release said.

Last year, the CFPB handled 542,300 complaints related to the coronavirus, an increase of 54% over the previous year. In March, the agency announced that it had received more than 3,000 complaints about COVID since April 2020.

Continue reading: U.S. pandemic scams and fraud cost consumers $ 382 million

“The pandemic is one of the most disruptive long-term events that we will experience in our lifetime,” said Uejio at the time. “Unsurprisingly, the shock waves it sent across the planet were deeply felt in the consumer financial market.”

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