CFPB Complaint Portal Provides Millions in Relief to People in the Deep South
December 29th, 2025
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)’s consumer complaint portal offers a critical tool for people seeking help with problems they encounter with payday lenders, debt collectors, banks, and other financial institutions. It enables people to raise specific challenges, and once submitted, the complaint is routed to the financial institutions for a response generally within 15 days. Through filing a complaint with the CFPB, people may potentially get relief, either through a resolution to the problems raised or money back in their pocket.
According to a recent report by the CFPB, people across the Deep South received more than $6.2 million in relief in 2024 from financial institutions as result of filing a complaint with the CFPB.[1] See Table 1. The relief went to people facing challenges across a range of products, such as credit cards, their checking or savings accounts, auto loans, student loans, and consumer credit reports, among others. The top three categories for relief provided to people were Checking and Savings Accounts ($4.1 million), Credit Cards ($1.1 million), and Auto Loans or Leases ($223.2 thousand).[2]
Table 1: Relief Provided to People who Filed a Complaint with the CFPB, by State
In 2024, nearly half a million people (460,988) from these six states submitted complaints to the CFPB.[3] In 2025, that number more than doubled (927,615).[4] Notably, the number of complaints from servicemembers and older Americans also grew.[5] For servicemembers, the number of complaints in the Deep South grew from 13,416 in 2024 to 19,369 in 2025. Older Americans in the region filed more than 2,800 complaints in 2025, up from 2,318 in 2024. The amount of money returned to people who filed a complaint in 2025 has not yet been published.
Despite this spike in Southern consumers seeking help from the CFPB to resolve a challenge with a financial institution, the CFPB’s progress in doing so lags 2024. Even though the number of complaints filed by people from the Deep South doubled from 2024 to 2025, the number of complaints closed with monetary relief is less this year than it was last year.[6] In terms of complaints marked “in progress” by year’s end, it was one percent (3,409) of all complaints in 2024, but in 2025, 15 percent (140,340) of complaints from people in the Deep South are lingering “in progress.”[7]
In addition to the direct relief it can provide to people, the complaint database is a critical tool for state and local governments, including law enforcement authorities, who also have resources to help people harmed by financial institutions. It is also vitally important for monitoring and tracking trends across the region, both for financial institutions and policy makers.
Looking forward to 2026, the CFPB should address the backlog of complaints in progress and ensure timely resolution of complaints. It should also continue to utilize the complaints database to inform its other responsibilities to enforce consumer protection and fair lending laws. For its next Annual Report, the CFPB should include the state-by-state relief provided as it did this year and consider adding a section and similar analysis for consumers from rural areas.
To file a complaint, people can do so online at https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/ and by phone at (855) 411-2372.
[1] Consumer Financial Protect Bureau, Consumer Response Annual Report: Jan. 1, 2024 – Dec. 31,2024, Table 2, available at https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_cr-annual-report_2025-05.pdf (2024 Consumer Response Report)
[2] Id.
[3] 2024 Consumer Response Report, Table 1.
[4] Hope Policy Institute analysis of CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, as of Dec. 29, 2025, https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints/
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
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