The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is changing how Americans file complaints, adding identity checks and new rules that steer credit reporting disputes back to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion first. 

The agency calls it cleanup. Consumer advocates call it a wall.

For borrowers who want to file a complaint against a financial company, here is what you need to know.

What Changed

The CFPB rolled out two-factor authentication for its complaint portal. Anyone creating an online account must now verify both an email address and a mobile phone number before submitting a complaint about any financial company — mortgages, debt collection, credit reporting, or anything else.

The CFPB is also planning address validation at the submission step, added notices telling consumers they must first use their dispute rights directly with credit bureaus before coming to the CFPB, and issued a new Company Portal Manual to standardize how companies categorize and close complaints.

It is exploring new “administrative response” options that would let bureaus return complaints flagged as unexhausted disputes or as system abuse.

By The Numbers

Credit reporting complaints have exploded. The CFPB received more than 150,000 credit and consumer reporting complaints in 2019. In 2025, that figure topped 5 million — a jump of more than 3,700%. The three nationwide bureaus closed 1.3 million complaints with non-monetary relief in 2024 and 2.1 million in 2025.

The CFPB blames the surge on credit repair companies gaming the system, social media influencers urging followers to file, AI tools acting as agents, and businesses that dispute accurate information to inflate scores. 

Without cleaner data, the Bureau argues, complaint records no longer reflect real market conditions.

What They’re Saying

The CFPB frames the moves as restoring integrity and protecting privacy, ensuring companies respond to legitimate complaints and that consumers exhaust their rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act first.

The National Consumer Law Center sees it differently. “The Trump administration’s CFPB, at the behest of the credit reporting companies, is deliberately creating barriers for people to report illegal and abusive actions by large financial companies,” said Diane Thompson, the group’s deputy director and chief advocacy officer. NCLC’s Chi Chi Wu added that the agency “should be doing its job to make it easier for people to get help, not throwing new obstacles in their path.”

Advocates note the CFPB offered no public evidence quantifying the alleged abuse, and that credit reporting accounts for roughly 85% of all complaints — meaning these changes hit the agency’s single largest category of consumer grievances.

How This Connects

For College Investor readers, the practical takeaway is the process itself. Filing directly with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion under the FCRA has always been the required first step before escalating to the CFPB — something that matters for student loan borrowers fixing servicer errors or victims of identity theft. 

The CFPB has used complaint data to act before, including a $15 million penalty against Equifax over mishandled disputes. Tighter portal rules raise the stakes on getting that first bureau dispute right.

The CFPB says it will keep working with the bureaus on standardized data and address validation. Expect legal and political scrutiny over how the agency defines “abuse” and whether the new friction reduces noise or simply reduces complaints.

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