RSSOn May 31, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau added another wave of complaint data to its complaint database, expanding the number of publicly reported complaints to 113,000.
Now adding complaints about credit reports and money transfers, the CFPB also has added sub-issues, a category for consumers with lesser complaints against financial companies such as incorrect information on a credit report, wrong personal information, or other errors of record.
Before, the only geographic information provided on a complaint was zip code. Now, the database also is outfitted to provide complaint data by the state as well.
This is the third expansion the bureau has made. When the CFPB launched the database last year with data on credit card complaints, more than 19,000 were made available to the public. That number expanded to more than 90,000 when the bureau added complaints about mortgages, student and consumer loans, bank accounts and servicing in March.
Now the bureau is encouraging consumers to participate in civic hacking, a term which means using the data on the CFPB’s website to help consumers understand the data.
To this end, the CFPB has laid out challenges. In one challenge the bureau suggests a civic hacker develop an application or service that allows consumers to subscribe to updates on financial products, services and companies. In another challenge the bureau suggests that a civic hacker could build a tool which shows correlations between consumer reaction on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook, and public CFPB consumer complaint data.
The bureau also said there is a need for a company that reports management changes, mergers and acquisitions, IPOs and major macroeconomic or market events. Since these often impact consumer financial products and experience, a tool for this kind of information could benefit anyone who would like to better understand how economic and corporate conditions impact the financial lives of American consumers, the CFPB said.
