CFPB Report: 2019-FMIC-C-008 June 3, 2019
Consumers have submitted over 1.7 million complaints about financial products and services with the Bureau since 2011. The agency shares complaint data internally to inform its work. The Bureau has developed tools to help staff search, summarize, and visualize the data. We evaluated the effectiveness of the Bureau's efforts to internally share complaint data, which can contain sensitive consumer information.
Overall, consumer complaint data are shared effectively within the Bureau. For example, research, supervision, legal, and other staff use complaint-sharing tools to understand consumer perspectives and identify trends. Expanding training for these tools could lead to more opportunities to use the data in the agency's work. At the same time, improving processes over access to the tools could better ensure that sensitive information is protected.
Our report contains recommendations.
