CFPB data shows consumers are “struggling to pay” during the pandemic

It’s no secret that many consumers are facing deep financial distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through September, only about half of the people who lost their jobs early in the pandemic had gone back to work. The $600 a week federal unemployment boost ended months ago. And critical policies like limits on debt collection and repossession have only been offered at the state level, leaving millions unprotected.

Data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) can shed some light on just which financial issues consumers have been most affected by during the pandemic, offering clues on what kinds of help American need to get through the coming months.

The CFPB’s Consumer Complaint Database, which contains nearly 2 million complaints about problems with financial products, gives consumers an option to publish the full story behind their complaint. These stories have personal information removed and are published as “consumer complaint narratives.”

To see which financial products consumers have been most affected by during the pandemic, I searched consumer complaint narratives from recent months for the following key terms: “coronavirus,” “CARES Act,” “COVID-19,” and “pandemic” (as well as common variations of those terms).¹

An analysis of these complaints shows that the main financial problems consumers have faced during the pandemic relate to struggling to pay bills and fighting to obtain relief.

The Consumer Complaint Database organizes complaints by product (for example, credit card or auto loan), issue, and sub-issue. The top five issues for which the pandemic appears in consumer narratives all concern consumers’ struggles to pay their bills.

For example, in the “credit card” issue category “struggling to pay your bill,” 63% of consumer complaint narratives submitted from March through October mentioned the pandemic. And for the issues of struggling to pay for a mortgage, and struggling to pay for a vehicle, more than half of narratives mentioned the pandemic.

At the same time, 2020 has seen a sharp increase in the total number of complaints (including complaints without accompanying published narratives) for problems relating to difficulties paying credit card bills and auto loans — increases of 57% and 17%, respectively, over 2019 levels.² This may well be related to the fact that consumers have been given no federal pandemic relief, such as guaranteed access to forbearance or payment deferment, for auto loans or credit card debt.

Top 10 issues in CFPB complaint database ranked by percentage of consumer narratives mentioning the pandemic³

Product	Issue	Narratives mentioning pandemic	Total narratives	Percentage of narratives mentioning pandemic
Credit card or prepaid card	Struggling to pay your bill	163	259	63%
Mortgage	Struggling to pay mortgage	740	1,436	52%
Vehicle loan or lease	Struggling to pay your loan	202	398	51%
Payday loan, title loan, or personal loan	Struggling to pay your loan	93	236	39%
Student loan	Struggling to repay your loan	80	247	32%
Mortgage	Incorrect information on your report	58	200	29%
Credit card or prepaid card	Fees or interest	332	1,208	27%
Credit card or prepaid card	Closing your account	192	790	24%
Credit card or prepaid card	Trouble using your card	119	507	23%
Payday loan, title loan, or personal loan	Problem when making payments	31	136	23%

Grouping complaints by the Consumer Complaint Database’s sub-issue categories shows that consumers aren’t just struggling to pay their bills during the pandemic, they are also having problems getting the relief that they need.

In the sub-issue “denied request to lower payments” within the “vehicle loan or lease” product category, 67% of complaint narratives received since March mentioned the pandemic. Consumers reported similar problems finding relief paying for credit cards and student loans. More than 60% of complaint narratives mention the pandemic for the sub-issue categories of “credit card company won’t work with you while you’re going through financial hardship” and problems with student loans for “can’t temporarily delay making payments.”

Top 10 sub-issues in CFPB complaint database ranked by percentage of consumer narratives mentioning the pandemic⁴

Product	Issue	Sub-issue	Narratives mentioning pandemic	Total narratives	Percentage of narratives mentioning pandemic
Vehicle loan or lease	Struggling to pay your loan	Denied request to lower payments	144	216	67%
Credit card or prepaid card	Struggling to pay your bill	Credit card company won’t work with you while you’re going through financial hardship	156	243	64%
Student loan	Struggling to repay your loan	Can’t temporarily delay making payments	40	66	61%
Vehicle loan or lease	Struggling to pay your loan	Lender trying to repossess or disable the vehicle	48	84	57%
Mortgage	Struggling to pay mortgage	N/A	740	1,436	52%
Payday loan, title loan, or personal loan	Struggling to pay your loan	N/A	93	236	39%
Student loan	Dealing with your lender or servicer	Problem with customer service	29	90	32%
Credit card or prepaid card	Fees or interest	Unexpected increase in interest rate	27	91	30%
Mortgage	Incorrect information on your report	N/A	58	200	29%
Credit card or prepaid card	Trouble using your card	Credit card company won’t increase or decrease your credit limit	72	250	29%

CFPB complaints suggest that as consumers continue to struggle under the burden of lost jobs and lost income caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, too often they are not getting the help they need.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Guaranteeing consumers access to forbearance for all types of debts, halting debt collection, and banning repossessions and evictions would go a long way toward helping people stay on their feet as the pandemic drags on. Consumers also need the CFPB to get back to cracking down on rulebreakers, rather than sitting on the sidelines.

Letting Americans sink deeper into debt or lose their homes or vehicles during this time of crisis would be absurd — and would also make America’s recovery far harder than it needs to be.

Photo credit: Madison Kaminski via Unsplash

 

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1. For March 1 through October 31 2020. You can perform similar searches and view narratives on the CFPB website.↩︎
2. The total number of complaints for “struggling to pay your bill” for credit cards increased from 366 to 566, and the total number of complaints for “struggling to your loan” for auto loans increased from 700 to 819. As of 3 November 2020, not all October complaints have been published in the CFPB database, so the number of 2020 complaints will likely rise in the coming weeks.↩︎
3. For issues with at least 50 total narratives.↩︎
4. For sub-issues with at least 50 total narratives. ‘N/A’ indicates no sub-issue category available for given issue.↩︎