A group of 35 consumer advocacy organizations are calling out the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for “bury[ing]” the narratives that consumers can submit when filing complaints, accusing the Bureau of doing so to “appease business fears.”
The advocacy groups submitted a letter to Kathleen Kraninger, the Director of the CFPB, requesting that the Bureau make access to the narratives more transparent for “non-experts.”
Businesses and companies across the financial services industry have argued that the narratives — which present only the consumer’s side of the complaint — are biased and lack the necessary context to put the complaints into perspective. There had been talk that the CFPB would do away with its allowing public access to the complaint database and the narratives when Mick Mulvaney was named acting Director of the CFPB following the resignation of Richard Cordray in 2018, but the Bureau backed away from that idea last year, committing to keeping access to the database open for everyone.
But the advocacy groups now say that for anyone to access the narratives, they need to make four clicks and know the ins and outs of the CFPB’s website. In the past, there were links on the CFPB’s homepage to the complaint database and access to the narratives was more conspicuous than it is now.
“The decision to bury complaint narratives was a clever attempt at balancing financial and consumer interests but this effort has bent too far in one direction, weakening the value of this complaint tool and making it far less meaningful for those who you have committed to serve — the consumer,” the groups wrote in their letter.
