The majority of the consumer complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during its first 11 months in existence relate to mortgage debt, the CFPB said in its semi-annual report to Congress.
CFPB data shows the bureau received 55,300 consumer complaints from July 21, 2011, through June 30.
Of those complaints, 43% involved mortgage issues. Credit cards ranked second in terms of complaint volume, representing 34% of all first-year calls. Student loans represented only 4% of all calls to the CFPB, while bank accounts and service issues drove 15% of the agency’s complaint traffic.
Consumer loans and other loan types made up the remaining 4% of complaints, with consumer loans making up only 2% of the CFPB’s overal complaint traffic in the past year.
About 44% of the complaints were submitted to the CFPB via its website, while 11% of those with issues phoned in their complaints. The rest of the complaints arrived via mail, email or fax.
Of the mortgage complaints reported to the CFPB, 54% involved borrowers who had problems with their loan modifications, a debt collection or foreclosure.
Twenty-five percent of the complaints came from borrowers who had problems related to payments, escrow accounts and loan servicing. Eight percent of the mortgage traffic involved issues when applying for a loan, followed by 4% who had trouble when signing mortgage agreements and 2% who had issues when receiving a credit offer. The remaining 7% of the complaints involved other issues.
