Financial Customer Complaints

Introduction

A deep dive into more than 62,000 consumer grievances recorded by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The dataset comes from the October 2025 DataDNA Consumer Financial Complaints Analytics Challenge hosted by Onyx Data DNA. The challenge had already closed, but the dataset was too compelling to ignore, so I analysed it independently to find where the system is failing everyday people.

Problem statement

Three questions drove the analysis:

• Where are the most common breakdowns occurring between consumers and financial institutions?
• Are companies responding to complaints effectively and on time?
• Which financial products, regions and companies show the highest consumer dissatisfaction?

About the dataset

• Volume: 62,516 complaints.
• Scope: 320 companies across 51 U.S. states.
• Products: nine main product categories, including Account, Card, Mortgage and Loan.
• Source: the official CFPB consumer complaint dataset, published to keep the financial sector transparent and accountable.

The dashboard

Five pages: Overview, Geography, Companies, Products and Resolution, each with its own filters.

Insights from the analysis

Key performance indicators

• 60,000+ complaints: a significant level of consumer frustration.
• 94% timely response rate: strong on regulatory compliance.
• 15 days average response time: a two-week turnaround. Compliant, but not fast.
• 1,226 average complaints per state: the issues are nationwide.

1. Top issues by total complaints

"Managing an account" generates more than 15,000 complaints, triple the next issue. That points to a fundamental breakdown in the day-to-day banking experience.

2. Complaint volume by product

Basic accounts make up 39.7% of complaints and credit cards 25.9%. Together they drive nearly two-thirds of the total. More complex products such as mortgages and loans generate proportionally fewer.

3. Complaints by census region

The Southern U.S. accounts for 37.8% of all complaints, a far higher share than any other region, which suggests regional economic or service-level challenges.

4. Complaints by company size

Large companies are responsible for 70% of all complaints. Consumer frustration is disproportionately linked to the industry's largest players.

5. Timely response rate by product

Personal Credit complaints get a timely response 91% of the time and Loan complaints 92%. The more complex the product, the slower the resolution.

6. Timely response rate by channel

The Web Referral channel has an 88% timely response rate, the lowest of the major channels. That is a specific bottleneck in digital complaint handling.

7. Total complaints by company response

More than 41,000 cases were closed with an "Explanation". "Monetary relief" was given roughly one-third as often. The system favours justification over tangible resolution.

Recommendations

Conclusion

The U.S. financial system is failing consumers on fundamentals. The bulk of complaints come from basic failures in everyday banking and from the practices of large companies. The system is reliable at logging and closing complaints, but slow and ineffective at delivering satisfactory outcomes. The path forward is for regulators to target the worst-performing companies and regions, and for the industry to fix its core account management services. True accountability means solving problems, not merely explaining them.

Tools used

• MS Excel for data cleaning and preparation.
• Power BI for analysis and visualisation.
• Figma for background design and layout.