On March 28, 2013, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it was going to share its database with the public, thereby “creating greater transparency in consumer financial products and services.” It did so, and as of May 31, the database has ballooned from approximately 19,000 complaints largely isolated to credit card issues to more than 113,000 complaints covering credit cards, mortgages, student loans, bank accounts, services and auto loans. With more than 10,000 complaints per month being added to the database, companies must be even more vigilant in regularly searching and responding to database “hits.”

In May, the CFPB announced that it was adding more categories to the database and was making it searchable by state. This is important to your company because, as we have seen with every other category on which the CFPB has collected data, the number of complaints in these new categories will grow at an exponential rate. Now is the time to think through a preparation strategy. In order to be prepared...