The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has handled approximately 143,700 complaints about credit reporting - including wrong information on reports and problems have errors resolved - since it began accepting complaints in October 2012.
The latest monthly CFPB complaint report, covering April to May, shows credit reporting complaints dropped 6% to 4,587. The monthly average since the CFPB started collecting complaints is 3,347. Credit reporting complaints declined 3% when looking at three-month averages comparing February to April 2015 (4,527 complaints) and February to April 2016 (4,387 complaints), according to the report.
Credit reporting represents 16% of total complaints tracked by the CFPB, following complaints about mortgages and debt collection.
Seventy-seven percent of credit reporting complaints submitted to the CFPB are linked to incorrect information on consumers' credit reports, according to the CFPB. Nine percent of complaints from consumers are about the credit reporting company’s investigation.
Elsewhere, the data on three-month averages shows debt collection complaints fell 3% when comparing February to April 2015 (7,351 complaints) and February to April 2016 (7,558), according to the report.
However, from April to May, collection complaints declined 9% to 7,330 complaints. The monthly average since the CFPB started collecting consumer complaints in 2011 is 6,326 and the CFPB received a total of 234,426 complaints about debt collection. Debt collection represented 27% of total cumulative complaints as of May 1.
The three-month average increase for student loan complaints is 48%, from 669 in February to April 2015 to 992 in February to April 2016, according to the report. Monthly, student loan complaints increased 8% to 1,224 as of May 1 and there have been 25,766 complaints since 2011.
Student loan complaints represent the highest month-over-month increase among all financial products and services, according to the report.
The CFPB has handled more than 882,800 complaints as of May 1 across all of the financial products it regulates, including approximately 23,900 in April.
ACA International, the largest association representing collection agencies, has stated it is "extremely concerned that the CFPB continues to release reports without any kind of normalization to put the complaint data in context. In reality, there is a positive correlation between the number of consumer contacts a business or industry makes and the number of consumer complaints it receives."
