The Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus’ Business-Friendly Move — ProPublica

Every year, millions of complaints flow to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from people across the country. The complaints, which range in focus from debt collection to credit reporting to payday loans and more, long served as a window into Americans’ gripes and struggles with various companies.

For over a decade, consumers could opt in to have what they wrote published as public information in a CFPB database. But last month, the Trump administration announced that it would stop publishing those complaint narratives, a decision that aligns the agency with corporations that have critiqued the system for years. 

“Publishing such narratives in the Database provides a less-than-representative sample of one-sided experiences,” the CFPB said in a press release.

In the big picture, the move is part of a trend of the administration taking a friendlier approach with businesses — even at the federal agency tasked with guarding consumers from unfair and deceptive practices.

The complaint system helps consumers get responses from companies about their problems, and sometimes even fixes. It has also given the public — as well as federal investigators and regulators— access to information that serves as a warning or to help spot problems.

As a ProPublica data reporter, I’ve used the complaints time and time again as a tool for accountability-driven reporting. I appreciated reading about people’s raw frustration, written in their own words, which can often point to larger trends. It was a rare federal dataset that captured human emotions. Some were grievances like being unable to get help after spending far too much time calling or emailing customer service. Sometimes complaints had more urgency: desperation to fix crushing high-interest debt, a frozen bank account or a credit score tanked from a reporting error. 

With the recent loss of a crucial piece of the public database, I wanted to share with you some of ProPublica’s reporting using those complaints. And, while these stories about financial harm have often led to some accountability, revisiting the complaints also offers a taste of what we’ll be missing.   

1. A Wisconsin Tribe Built a Lending Empire Charging 600% Annual Rates to Borrowers

I’ve used the complaints to report on high-interest tribal loans that skirt state interest rate caps to charge 600% interest or more. CFPB complaints helped point me and my colleague Megan O’Matz to an opaque but massive lending operation based in Wisconsin, which we estimated to be involved in thousands of bankruptcies nationwide each year. 

The borrower also argued that “no one should be expected to pay over $11,000 for a $1,200 loan,” calling the 790% rate “beyond predatory.”

In emails to ProPublica, the tribe’s president, John Johnson Sr., defended the tribe’s lending business as legal and said the loans help people “without access to traditional financial services.” He added that many borrowers have had positive experiences.

A few months after ProPublica reported on the operation, the tribe settled a civil suit filed by Minnesota’s attorney general. The tribe denied the allegations but agreed to stop lending to Minnesotans and forgive outstanding loans to the state’s residents. 

2. Credit Bureaus Are Leaving More Mistakes on Frustrated Consumers’ Reports Under Trump’s CFPB

In March, I reported that two of the big three credit bureaus, Experian and TransUnion, provided relief to a substantially smaller portion of consumers last year. The credit bureaus are by far the most common subject of consumers’ woes in the database, with over 4 million complaints filed about them in 2025.

A Texan filed a complaint to each of the three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, writing that a fraudulent account remained on their credit report despite their disputes:

In response to the story, four Democratic senators wrote letters to the credit bureaus demanding answers on how they handle disputes and complaints. The CFPB’s acting director at the time, Russell Vought, also tacitly acknowledged the reporting during his congressional testimony in July, saying that “with credit reporting agencies we saw things in the news that were concerning to us. We reached out to them.”

The credit bureaus did not comment on specific complaints, but told ProPublica that many complaints are illegitimate, including a large volume filed by credit repair organizations that charge customers to challenge negative information on their reports. (CFPB records show that Equifax provided relief in response to the Texan’s complaint, while TransUnion and Experian did not.)

3. The Trump Administration’s Plan for Protecting Consumers? Politely Ask Companies to Behave.

Last month, my colleague Andy Kroll reported on the Trump CFPB’s light-touch approach to oversight, focusing on its ask-nicely strategy of holding the fintech startup Bilt accountable after it threw users’ accounts into chaos twice in quick succession. The story included complaints about how Bilt’s artificial intelligence support system gave information that was:

(In a statement at the time, Bilt said its new card had “attracted unexpectedly high demand, and some of our members experienced gaps in service that are simply unacceptable to us.” The company told ProPublica it resolved all problems related to the new cards “months ago.” The CFPB did not respond to any questions or requests for comment.)

Kroll’s recent story also examined how the agency has changed under the Trump administration. Under Vought’s leadership, the CFPB attempted to fire roughly 90% of its staff in April 2025 before a federal court ruling stymied the move. When the efforts to dismantle the agency failed, Vought and his allies instead refashioned it into an industry-friendly regulator.

The loss of the public complaint narratives is another example of that. And it is a win for groups such as the Consumer Data Industry Association, which represents the credit bureaus and has argued that publishing complaint narratives would “harm the brands of legitimate, law-abiding companies” by presenting unverified, self-selected negative anecdotes. More recently, the group argued in a January public comment letter that the complaint portal has become “a sort of ‘Yelp for Financial Services,’” and that the CFPB doesn’t have the authority to publish complaint data in the first place. 

Although the CFPB has been subject to partisan fights, the complaint system has been used by Americans across the country. GOP lawmakers even referred thousands of constituents to the CFPB’s complaint system to get help. Still, those same lawmakers voted last year to slash the agency’s budget by nearly half.

While the complaint system is required by law, the agency isn’t mandated to make it public. In theory, a future administration could go back to publishing the complaint narratives, but the agency has removed the option for consumers to consent to making public what they wrote. That means that any complaints filed in the near term cannot be retroactively published. The complaint narratives will still be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, but getting them could be time-consuming and challenging. 

As the CFPB turns away from its watchdog role, it’s making it harder for all of us to watch as well.