@pipeworx/cfpb

Connect: https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cfpb/mcp · Install: one-click buttons

Tools: 5

The CFPB’s Consumer Complaint Database. Every consumer complaint filed with the CFPB about a financial product (mortgages, credit cards, debt collection, banking, payments, student loans, etc.), tagged with company, product, issue, response, and outcome. ~5M+ complaints since 2011. Free, no auth, public.

Why this matters for AI agents

For consumer-finance risk assessment, brand reputation analysis, or “is this company’s posture deteriorating?” questions, CFPB complaints are the canonical leading indicator. Spikes correlate with brewing reputational issues, often before they show up in earnings.

Common flows:

• Company posture. cfpb_company_complaints({company: "Wells Fargo"}) → complaint volume by year, product, issue.
• Product breakdown. cfpb_product_breakdown → industry-wide distribution of complaints across product categories.
• Issue-level drilldown. Filter by issue tags (e.g., “Charged fees or interest you didn’t expect”).

Used by the fintech_company_deep_dive compound and the financial_health_check recipe.

Auth

None. The CFPB Consumer Complaint Database is fully public.

Product taxonomy

CFPB groups complaints into a stable taxonomy:

Product-level complaint volume varies massively. A bank with high mortgage complaints isn’t directly comparable to a fintech with high “money transfer” complaints — context matters.

Update cadence

Daily. Complaints generally appear within ~15 days of submission. Consumer responses (whether the user marked the company response as “satisfactory”) trickle in over weeks.

Common pitfalls

• Volume ≠ wrongdoing. A bank with 100,000 customers and 100 complaints has a low rate; a tiny lender with 1,000 customers and 50 complaints has a much higher rate. Always normalize by customer base or AUM where possible.
• Company name normalization. “JPMorgan Chase,” “JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.,” “Chase” — all the same company in different contexts. CFPB normalizes to a “company” field; verify by searching multiple variants.
• Response status meaning. “Closed with relief,” “Closed without relief,” “Closed with monetary relief” — these are the company’s own classification of the outcome. Read the per-complaint narrative for context.
• Selection bias. Not every dissatisfied customer files with the CFPB. Volume reflects awareness of the CFPB as a recourse, not pure customer dissatisfaction. Trends over time are more meaningful than absolute counts.
• Industry comparisons. Use cfpb_product_breakdown to anchor a company’s volume against industry baseline before judging.

Tools

• cfpb_search_complaints — Search consumer complaints by keyword, company, product, or date range. Returns complaint narratives, company responses, and resolution status.
• cfpb_company_complaints — Get recent complaints against a specific company (e.g., ‘Wells Fargo’). Returns narratives, company responses, and resolution details sorted newest first.
• cfpb_get_complaint — Retrieve full details for a specific complaint by ID. Returns narrative, company response, resolution status, and metadata.
• cfpb_top_companies — Find companies with the most complaints in a date range. Returns ranked list with company names and complaint counts.
• cfpb_product_breakdown — Get complaint counts by product category (e.g., ‘Credit Card’, ‘Mortgage’). Filter by company or date range.