US (AMERICANS FOR FINANCIAL REFORM) : TRUMP’s CFPB is helping WALL STREET hide complaints from the public.

 

Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is making corporate wrongdoing harder for the public to see. On August 14, the CFPB announced that it would stop publishing people’s stories when they reach out to the agency for help, along with the data visualizations that allow the public to identify patterns across complaints. For years, people have used the CFPB complaint database to describe financial scams, abusive lending, credit reporting failures, discrimination, debt collection harassment, and endless corporate runarounds. Those stories are published only with the consumer’s consent and after steps are taken to remove personal information. Now the Trump CFPB wants those experiences pushed out of public view. More than 17 million reports have been submitted to the CFPB. That information gives consumers, journalists, lawmakers, researchers, and other watchdogs a way to see when the same problems keep appearing at the same companies. Hiding the narratives and the tools used to analyze them makes it easier for big banks, lenders, debt collectors, credit bureaus, and other financial corporations to escape scrutiny. The CFPB cannot simply ignore its open-government responsibilities because public scrutiny is inconvenient for corporations and Wall Street. Tell the CFPB: Reverse this decision, keep consumer complaint information publicly accessible, and comply with federal open-data law. SIGN ON Behind every complaint is a real person trying to get help. Someone whose credit report contains an error they cannot get fixed. Someone charged fees they never agreed to pay. Someone trapped by a predatory loan. Someone trying to understand why they were denied a mortgage, charged more for an auto loan, or treated differently by a financial company. Making those stories harder to find does not make the underlying abuse disappear. It makes patterns of abuse and discrimination harder to identify and gives corporations more room to insist that every consumer’s experience is isolated. The CFPB argues that complaint narratives can be incomplete or unverified. But the database has long made clear that complaints represent consumers’ experiences, and public access gives people another source of information when deciding whom to trust with their money. The answer to imperfect information is context and transparency, not hiding it. The CFPB should be using consumer complaints to expose marketplace problems and protect the public, not reducing transparency to protect corporate reputations. Financial companies already have enormous resources to defend themselves. Consumers should not lose one of the most important public tools they have for making their experiences heard. Add your name and demand that the CFPB keep consumer complaints public, restore the complaint narratives and visualizations, and stop helping financial corporations hide from accountability. Thank you for standing up for transparency, accountability, and consumers. - Tom Tom Feltner (he/his) Associate Director of Consumer Policy Americans for Financial Reform Support the campaign

Americans for Financial Reform