Research and reports

Each year, millions of consumers encounter tenant screening as a gateway in their path to rental housing.

Report on the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) industry in the United States, focusing on consumer and marketplace impacts.

An analysis of the risks that nursing home residents and their caregivers face by assessing consumer complaints, nursing home admission contracts, and debt collection lawsuits.

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

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

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 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.

This report summarizes key areas of concern in medical debt collections and reporting. The report begins with a section describing the medical debt landscape. It then discusses the negative consequences of medical debt for consumers. Next, it outlines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical debt. The report concludes with a brief discussion of federal and state regulatory developments.

This report summarizes public facing information from financial institutions regarding their internal diversity, equity, and inclusion programming. Based on its findings, the report also includes recommendations and best practices for institutions based on the size of their organizations.

This report describes the Bureau’s methodology for estimating how many banks would be required to report under the proposed rule implementing section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act and for producing market-level estimates of associated costs.

This report presents the CFPB’s observations of data provided by sixteen large mortgage servicers regarding COVID-19 pandemic response, including key metrics such as call center data; forbearance requests, denials, and exits; delinquency; and borrower profiles.

This report summarizes some of the relevant data and research on the impact of the pandemic on the rental and mortgage market, and particularly its impact on low income and minority households. 11 million renter and homeowner households were significantly overdue on their regular housing payments as of December 2020, placing them at heightened risk of losing their homes to foreclosure or eviction over the coming months. Black and Hispanic households were more than twice as likely to report being behind on their payments than white households.

This report summarizes the Bureau’s February 26, 2020, symposium on Consumer Access to Financial Records and Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

This report explores the prevalence and ease of first-time homeownership over time.

This report provides a brief overview of third-party debt collections tradelines. It compares tradelines from debt buyers to those from other debt collectors.

This Advisory Update focuses on financial institution reporting of elder financial exploitation to federal, state and local first responders.

This report describes the Bureau’s data governance program. In addition, it describes what data the Bureau collects, where the data come from, how data are used, and how data are reused within the Bureau.  

This report identifies key patterns revealed in Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) on elder financial exploitation filed by financial institutions with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from 2013 to 2017.

These consumer protection principles are intended to help safeguard consumer interests as the consumer-authorized aggregation services market develops.

Student loan debt is having an increasing impact on older Americans, according to CFPB research.

This report spotlights the growing number of employer-based student loan repayment programs that can save eligible employees hundreds of thousands in loan principle and interests payments, but where barriers to innovation exist. This report also features a series of recommendations to help employers and other companies that manage benefits programs ensure that borrowers receive the maximum value. 

This paper reflects initial findings of the Bureau’s research on the small business lending market. It provides a preliminary understanding of the small business lending environment, with a particular emphasis on lending to women-owned and minority-owned small businesses.

This report summarizes strategies for promoting diversity and inclusion used by mortgage industry participants as discussed at the Bureau’s initial roundtable. It highlights the business case for diversity along with current approaches and practices used in the mortgage industry, such as establishing buy-in from top leadership, integrating principles of inclusion in recruiting and hiring, and the importance of data in assessing the impact of diversity on keeping organizations competitive. The report is the result of the CFPB’s collaboration with the financial services industry to raise awareness of the importance of strengthening diversity and inclusion within organizations.

This report provides an introduction to the online marketplace for charged-off debt. 

This report provides an overview of Project Catalyst’s work to promote consumer-friendly innovation and highlights the importance of ensuring consumer protections are built into emerging products and services from the outset.