Reports

The 2022 Financial Literacy Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is required under Section 1013 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

This report is required by statute. It covers the student lending market, complaints, challenges for consumers, and makes recommendations to policy makers.

The 2021 Financial Literacy Annual Report details the CFPB’s financial literacy strategy and activities to improve the financial literacy of consumers. Overall, this report describes the CFPB’s efforts in a broad range of financial literacy areas relevant to consumers’ financial lives.

The 2021 Annual Report of the CFPB Education Loan Ombudsman reviews student loan complaints, the student loan and education ecosystems, the return to repayment, and servicing transfers.

This guide identifies promising practices and common challenges in providing remote financial coaching services.

This report presents results and lessons learned from the CFPB’s Financial Coaching Initiative. The CFPB placed financial coaches in 60 community-based organizations across the country. The program reached over 23,000 veterans and economically vulnerable consumers. The report provides guidance on how to implement a coaching program across a range of diverse communities and organizations.

This report provides a foundational set of benchmarks of the financial well-being of Hispanics ages 18 and older in the United States in 2018, as measured by the CFPB Financial Well-Being Scale, that practitioners and researchers can use in their work.

The Bureau is pleased to submit to Congress its annual report summarizing the Bureau’s activities along with those of the Federal Trade Commission to administer the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).

The 2020 Financial Literacy Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau details the Bureau’s financial literacy activities and strategy to improve the financial literacy of consumers. Overall, this report describes the Bureau’s efforts in a broad range of financial literacy areas relevant to consumers’ financial lives.

This report is about the work of the CFPB’s Office of Servicemember Affairs for the period from October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019.

The Bureau is pleased to submit to Congress its annual report summarizing the Bureau’s activities along with those of the Federal Trade Commission to administer the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).

The 2019 Financial Literacy Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau details the Bureau's financial literacy activities and strategy to improve the financial literacy of consumers. Overall, this report describes the Bureau's efforts in a broad range of financial literacy areas relevant to consumers' financial lives.

This report provides the first state-by-state description of the financial well-being of adults in the United States, as measured by the CFPB Financial Well-Being Scale.  

The CFPB researched the childhood origins of financial capability and well-being to identify those roots and to find promising practices and strategies to support their development.

This research brief is intended to help stakeholders understand how the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) financial literacy data about the U.S. may be used to identify effective approaches to financial education and better define the metrics for success.

This report presents results from a joint research study between the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Credit Karma. The purpose of the study is to examine how consumers’ subjective financial well-being relates to objective measures of consumers’ financial health, specifically, consumers’ credit report characteristics. The study also seeks to relate consumers’ subjective financial well-being to consumers’ engagement with financial information through educational tools. 

A large study exploring tax-time saving found that early messaging and small incentives were effective at encouraging some customers to save using a savings feature on their prepaid card.

This report lays out key unanswered research questions in youth financial education identified by a range of stakeholders.

This report is designed to help education policymakers, program leaders, financial educators, and academic researchers make evidence-informed policy, programming and resourcing decisions in school-based financial education.

The Bureau, along with its partners at the Federal Trade Commission, is pleased to submit to Congress its annual report summarizing their 2018 activities to administer the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”).

The 2018 Financial Literacy Annual Report is a statutorily mandated report to Congress on the Bureau’s activities and strategy to improve the financial capability and well-being of consumers. 

This report describes Bureau research on ways to help consumers better manage their cash flow and bills. This research found that suggesting consumers do something as simple as changing bill due dates to align with income flow could help some consumers better manage their cash flow. 

Building and retaining savings is important because it provides a financial foundation on which to plan for the future.  

The Bureau held a forum on child savings accounts. We produced a report on the forum so that you can learn more about how states and communities are offering opportunities for families to save for post-secondary education.

The Bureau led a research effort to develop a “scale” to measure financial skill. This guide describes the research behind the Financial Skill Scale and provides detailed steps for using the scale.