[author: Barbara S. Mishkin]

The CFPB has issued a “snapshot” of the consumer complaints it received from July 21, 2011 through September 30, 2012. The CFPB’s report covers credit card, mortgage, bank account and service, and private student loan complaints. For each category, the CFPB describes the most common types of complaints and how complaints have been handled. Except for private student loans, the CFPB also describes the median amount of monetary relief paid to consumers. Based on the CFPB’s breakdown of the number of complaints received in each category, it appears that credit card and mortgage complaints accounted for more than 70% of all consumer complaints (approximately 79,200) received by the CFPB during the period covered by its report.

The CFPB also announced updates to its consumer complaint database. First, the database is no longer in beta. Second, the CFPB has released in the database consumer credit card complaint data back to December 1, 2011. The CFPB also said that it anticipates making a final decision early in 2013 about adding more products and services to the database and continues to evaluate other potential database updates.