Depending on how the shake-up at the top of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau goes, one of the things that could be on the chopping block is the complaint database maintained by the agency.
The CFPB has maintained a database of complaints from consumers about different categories of financial services companies, including debt collection, since its inception. The agency passes all complaints on to the organization being complained about and requires the company to respond to the complaint within 15 days.
Debt collection has been a very popular target of complaints from consumers. Before something happens to the CFPB complaint database, one published report attempted to use it to see how different financial services organizations manage their customer service operations.
Between the start of 2015 and April 2017, debt collection companies received the most number of complaints per 100,000 people, according to the report. The 62.1 complaints per 100,000 consumers was more than 50% higher than the next category — mortgages, which had 40.3 complaints per 100,000 consumers.
In terms of resolving complaints in a satisfactory manner, all of the groups of financial services companies fared the same, including debt collection agencies. Consumers disputed the responses from debt collection companies 17.5% of the time, which compares equitably with other groups — mortgages (21.4%), credit cards (20.4%), student loan (17.9%), and bank accounts (17.5%).
Among collection agencies, Portfolio Recovery Associates, ERC, and Encore Capital Group had the highest dispute rates.
