Research and reports

In recent years, the payment space has moved from an ecosystem with clear constraints and established players to a rapidly evolving environment.

Required financial assistance is a form of community benefit involving medical care that is provided for free, or at a discount, to patients who cannot afford to pay.

This is part of a series of reports of consumer credit trends produced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau using a longitudinal sample of approximately five million de-identified credit records from one of the three nationwide consumer reporting agencies.

This consumer credit trends report explores credit card line decreases and changes in consumer credit characteristics.

The Office of Servicemember Affairs’ 2021 annual report on the top financial concerns facing servicemembers, veterans, and military families, based on the complaints they submitted to the CFPB.

This data spotlight shares findings on the state of financial well-being in 2020 and how it has changed over time, with an emphasis on the negative impact among certain demographics and U.S. adults with lower financial well-being.

CFPB’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Strategic Plan for FY 2022-2026.

Over 1.2 million adults ages 60 and older lost a spouse in 2019. This spotlight describes the characteristics and financial circumstances of older surviving spouses.

This report presents the CFPB’s observations of data provided by sixteen mortgage servicers for the period May-December 2021 regarding key servicing metrics and COVID-19 pandemic response.

This data spotlight examines the characteristics and experiences of the 3.2 million older adults living in mobile homes in 2022.

The Bureau is committed to ensuring fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory access to credit for both individuals, small businesses, and communities. This report describes our fair lending activities in enforcement and supervision; guidance and rulemaking; interagency coordination; and outreach and education for calendar year 2021.

This is the 26th edition of Supervisory Highlights. The findings included in this report cover examinations completed between July 2021 and December 2021 in the areas of auto servicing, consumer reporting, credit card account management, debt collection, deposits, mortgage origination, prepaid accounts, remittances, and student loan servicing.

The FY 2021 Equal Employment Opportunity status report known as Management Directive 715 (MD-715) for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

This report analyzes debt collection and credit or consumer reporting complaints submitted to the Bureau in 2021.

This report highlights the CFPB’s research on rural consumers as well as contextual information from other agencies on the consumer finance challenges faced by rural communities.

The Bureau’s annual report to Congress summarizes the Bureau’s activities to administer the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) in 2021 as the primary federal regulator of the consumer debt collection industry. This report also includes activities conducted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2021 in relation to debt collection.

The CFPB's Equity Action Plan

New analysis of student loan borrowers to identify groups of borrowers who may encounter difficulties when the CARES Act federal payment suspension ends.

Fall 2021 Semi-Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

This report examines state payday loan extended payment plans, an intervention allowing consumers to repay their payday loans in no-cost installments. It finds that despite the prevalence of state laws providing for these plans, rollover and default rates consistently exceed extended payment plan usage rates.

The FY 2021 OMWI annual report to Congress provides detailed information about the diversity and inclusion work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from Oct. 1, 2020 through Sept. 30, 2021.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began consumer response operations on July 21, 2011, and became the first federal agency solely focused on consumer financial protection. The Bureau’s Consumer Response team hears directly from consumers about the challenges they face in the marketplace, brings their concerns to the attention of financial institutions, and assists in addressing their complaints.

This report explores both the significant consumer impact of and industry reliance on credit card late fees.

This COVID-19 Special Issue Brief follows up on a May 2021 report that discussed the characteristics of mortgage borrowers, including demographics, during the COVID-19 pandemic. A significant number of homeowners have transitioned out of those forbearances over the last year due, in part, to improving economic conditions and the expiration of protections under these programs for many loans beginning in the Fall of 2021. Given these changes, our goal in this report is to better understand the characteristics of borrowers who remain in forbearance, as reported through January 2022.

New analysis in our Making Ends Meet series looks at financial security by examining how much consumers have in emergency savings and their financial profiles.