Research and reports

This report focuses on the consumer finances of rural Appalachians, and is the first in a series of reports focusing on the finances of rural consumers.

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 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.

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 outlines challenges faced by justice-involved people and their families in navigating their finances at each stage of the criminal justice system.

This report summarizes information about certain consumer complaints transmitted by the CFPB to nationwide consumer reporting agencies (NCRAs)—Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

This Consumer Credit Trends report describes patterns in dispute flags that appear on consumers’ credit reports.

A new analysis investigating the financial conditions of renters and homeowners before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This report explores the trends of commercial credit reporting on consumer credit.

A new analysis examines the early impact of COVID-19 on consumers’ finances, finding that, in general, they were more able to stay on top of finances in June 2020 than June 2019.

This report explores the prevalence of actual payment information in consumer credit reporting.

Credit Builder Loans are designed for consumers looking to establish a credit score or improve an existing one, while at the same time giving them a chance to build their savings.

This report uses the Bureau’s Consumer Credit Panel to study the early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on credit applications overall, by credit score group, and across the states.

Quarterly consumer credit trends reports focus on a specific consumer financial product or issue using a longitudinal, nationally representative sample of de-identified credit records maintained by a nationwide consumer reporting agency.

In this special issue of Supervisory Highlights, we report examination findings in the areas of consumer reporting and furnishing of information to consumer reporting companies, pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Regulation V. The report does not impose any new or different legal requirements, and all violations described in the report are based only on those specific facts and circumstances noted during those examinations. 

In this issue of Supervisory Highlights, we report examination findings in the areas of automobile loan origination, credit card account management, debt collection, furnishing, and mortgage origination that were generally completed between December 2018 and March 2019 (unless otherwise stated). The report does not impose any new or different legal requirements, and all violations described in the report are based only on those specific facts and circumstances noted during those examinations. 

This report on the Bureau’s September 17th, 2018 Building a Bridge to Credit Visibility Symposium summarizes the panel discussions that took place during the event and highlights the key themes that stood out from those conversations.

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

Quarterly consumer credit trends reports focus on a specific consumer financial product or issue using a longitudinal, nationally-representative sample of de-identified credit records maintained by a nationwide credit reporting company.

Quarterly consumer credit trends reports focus on a specific consumer financial product or issue using a longitudinal, nationally-representative sample of de-identified credit records maintained by a nationwide credit reporting company.

Recent natural disasters, such as Hurricane Harvey in 2017, have significantly impacted some consumers financially. In this report, the Bureau examines how natural disasters are reported in consumers’ credit reports.

Consumers typically pay for telecommunications services monthly, but most providers do not report to consumer reporting agencies unless an account is in collections. In this report, we explore how these debts are reported.