Original Research

The Credit Reporting Complaint Explosion

Name: U.S. CFPB Aggregated Consumer Complaint Dataset (2011–2026)
Creator: Settlement Insight
Published: 2026-06-06
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

We analyzed all 18,399,780 complaints in the U.S. CFPB Consumer Complaint Database. Three credit bureaus account for 78.6% of every complaint filed — and annual volume has exploded 32.3× since 2015.

Reviewed by Leonard Goldberg, Editor · Last updated October 15, 2026

18.4M

Consumer complaints

Filed 2011-12 – 2026-10

32.3×

Growth, 2015 → 2025

168K → 5.4M per year

78.6%

From the Big Three bureaus

Equifax, Experian, TransUnion combined

82%

Are credit-reporting complaints

vs. all other financial products

Key Findings

The CFPB’s public complaint database is one of the largest records of consumer financial grievance in the United States. Our aggregation of all 18,399,780 complaints filed since December 2011 surfaces a striking concentration — and an extraordinary growth curve.

Three companies dominate. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion together account for 14,456,119 complaints — 78.6% of the entire database — out of 8,165 distinct companies.
Volume grew 32.3× in a decade. Annual complaints rose from 168,272 in 2015 to 5,442,951 in 2025.
Credit reporting swamps everything else. 82% of all complaints concern credit reports — debt collection, mortgages, and credit cards make up most of the rest.
The surge is recent and accelerating. 76% of all complaints in the database were filed since January 2024, and 2026 passed the full 2025 total before the year was out.

Complaints filed per year

Full calendar years, 2012–2025. The 2026 figure (5,717,410 through October 14, 2026) is partial and excluded from the chart.

Source: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, aggregated by Settlement Insight.

The Big Three credit bureaus

Of 8,165 companies named in the database, just three — the national credit-reporting agencies — draw 78.6% of all complaints:

5.1M

TransUnion

27.7% of all complaints

4.9M

Equifax

26.6% of all complaints

4.5M

Experian

24.3% of all complaints

What people complain about

Complaint volume by financial product. Credit-reporting categories dwarf every other product.

Where complaints come from

Top 10 states by complaint volume.

State	Complaints	Share
Texas	2,550,887	13.9%
Florida	2,523,167	13.7%
California	1,818,198	9.9%
Georgia	1,354,248	7.4%
New York	1,058,535	5.8%
Illinois	783,752	4.3%
Pennsylvania	712,410	3.9%
North Carolina	634,912	3.5%
New Jersey	584,425	3.2%
AL	452,794	2.5%

Cite this research

This analysis is released as an open, citable dataset. Researchers and journalists are welcome to use it with attribution.

DOI

Permanent identifier

10.5281/zenodo.23378000

APA

Goldberg, L. (2026). U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — Aggregated Consumer Complaint Dataset (2011–2026) [Data set]. Settlement Insight. https://settlementinsight.com/research/credit-report-complaints

BibTeX

@dataset{goldberg_2026_cfpb,
  author    = {Goldberg, Leonard},
  title     = {{U.S. CFPB -- Aggregated Consumer Complaint Dataset (2011--2026)}},
  year      = 2026,
  publisher = {Settlement Insight},
  url       = {https://settlementinsight.com/research/credit-report-complaints}
}

Download the data

Aggregated CSV files — CC BY 4.0. Free to use with attribution.

Charts for your story

Free to publish with a link to this page (CC BY 4.0). Each chart carries its source line. PNG, 2400 × 1350 pixels.

Consumer complaints received by the CFPB per year
Download PNG
Embed this chart
<figure style="margin:0"><a href="https://settlementinsight.com/research/credit-report-complaints"><img src="https://settlementinsight.com/studien/grafik/credit-report-complaints/1-d1-cfpb-by-year-complaints.png" alt="Column chart: Consumer complaints received by the CFPB per year (* 2026: partial). 2012: 72K; 2026 (partial): 5.72M. Source: Settlement Insight." width="1200" height="675" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><figcaption>Source: <a href="https://settlementinsight.com/research/credit-report-complaints">Settlement Insight</a>, The Credit Reporting Complaint Explosion</figcaption></figure>
CFPB consumer complaints by product
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Embed this chart
<figure style="margin:0"><a href="https://settlementinsight.com/research/credit-report-complaints"><img src="https://settlementinsight.com/studien/grafik/credit-report-complaints/2-d2-cfpb-by-product-complaints.png" alt="Bar chart: CFPB consumer complaints by product. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports: 12.79M; Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports: 2.16M; Debt collection: 1.21M. Source: Settlement Insight." width="1200" height="675" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><figcaption>Source: <a href="https://settlementinsight.com/research/credit-report-complaints">Settlement Insight</a>, The Credit Reporting Complaint Explosion</figcaption></figure>
Companies with the most CFPB consumer complaints
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Embed this chart
<figure style="margin:0"><a href="https://settlementinsight.com/research/credit-report-complaints"><img src="https://settlementinsight.com/studien/grafik/credit-report-complaints/3-d3-cfpb-by-company-complaints.png" alt="Bar chart: Companies with the most CFPB consumer complaints. TRANSUNION INTERMEDIATE HOLDINGS, INC.: 5.09M; EQUIFAX, INC.: 4.89M; Experian Information Solutions Inc.: 4.47M. Source: Settlement Insight." width="1200" height="675" style="max-width:100%;height:auto"></a><figcaption>Source: <a href="https://settlementinsight.com/research/credit-report-complaints">Settlement Insight</a>, The Credit Reporting Complaint Explosion</figcaption></figure>

Methodology

We aggregated the complete public CFPB Consumer Complaint Database (18,399,780 records received between 2011-12-01 and 2026-10-14). Counts are grouped by company, product, year, and state exactly as reported by the CFPB. No records were dropped or weighted.

The CFPB database grows every day, so this page is regenerated from the live copy. The archived dataset behind the DOI (version 2.0.0) is a fixed snapshot taken on October 14, 2026 with 18,399,780 complaints — the same snapshot as the figures on this page.

Important caveats

A complaint is a consumer submission, not a proven violation. The CFPB does not verify the factual claims in each complaint.
The recent surge is concentrated in credit-reporting disputes, many submitted in bulk through third-party credit-repair services — so growth reflects both rising consumer use and changing submission patterns, not solely an increase in underlying problems.
Company names are reported as-filed and not consolidated across corporate subsidiaries beyond the CFPB’s own normalization.
The 2026 figure is a partial year and is excluded from year-over-year comparisons.

The full aggregated dataset is available above as CSV downloads under a CC BY 4.0 license. Source data is published by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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