CFPB Consumer Complaints Normalizer 🔍

Search and normalize 16.8M+ consumer financial complaints from the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) public database. Get cleaned, categorized, and scored complaint data with AI-powered normalization — company name deduplication, issue categorization, and severity scoring.

No API key needed — the CFPB database is completely free and public.

✨ What Makes This Different

Most CFPB scrapers give you raw data. This actor gives you actionable intelligence:

• 🏢 Company Name Normalization — "TRANSUNION INTERMEDIATE HOLDINGS, INC." → "TransUnion". 80+ company mappings covering banks, debt collectors, credit bureaus, and mortgage servicers.
• 🏷️ Issue Categorization — 178 raw issue types grouped into 15 high-level categories (Credit Report Errors, Debt Collection Harassment, Mortgage Servicing, etc.)
• 🔥 Severity Scoring (0-100) — Multi-signal scoring based on issue type, narrative presence, dispute status, and company response
• 📊 Trend Analysis — Top products, companies, issue categories, severity distribution, and response type breakdowns

📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
searchQuery	string	✅	Company name, product, or keyword to search
product	string	❌	Filter by product (e.g. "Credit reporting", "Debt collection")
issue	string	❌	Filter by specific issue type
company	string	❌	Filter by company name (exact CFPB name)
state	string	❌	Two-letter US state code (e.g. "CA", "TX")
dateFrom	string	❌	Start date YYYY-MM-DD
dateTo	string	❌	End date YYYY-MM-DD
hasNarrative	boolean	❌	Only complaints with written narratives
maxResults	integer	❌	Max complaints (1-1000, default 50)
includeTrends	boolean	❌	Compute trend analysis (default true)

📤 Example Input

{
  "searchQuery": "credit reporting",
  "product": "Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports",
  "company": "TRANSUNION INTERMEDIATE HOLDINGS, INC.",
  "hasNarrative": true,
  "maxResults": 50,
  "includeTrends": true
}

📊 Example Output

==========================================================================================
  CFPB CONSUMER COMPLAINTS — NORMALIZED RESULTS
==========================================================================================
  Search:        credit reporting
  Retrieved:     50 complaints
  With Narrative: 50 (100.0%)
  Consumer Disputed: 12 (24.0%)
  Timely Response: 96.0%

  Top Products                                  Count
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Credit reporting or other personal consumer    50

  Top Issue Categories                          Count
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Credit Report Errors                           28
  Dispute Handling                               15
  Credit Report Misuse                            7

  Severity Distribution                         Count
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  HIGH                                            18
  MEDIUM                                          24
  LOW                                              8

  Top Companies                                 Count
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  TransUnion                                      50

  Sample Complaints (first 5):
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
   1. [2024-09-03] TransUnion               | Credit Report Misuse  | high
   2. [2024-08-28] TransUnion               | Credit Report Errors  | medium
   3. [2024-08-15] TransUnion               | Dispute Handling      | high

Each dataset item includes:

• companyRaw / companyNormalized — original and cleaned company names
• issueCategory — high-level issue grouping
• severityScore (0-100) / severityLevel (low/medium/high)
• All original fields: product, issue, date, state, response, narrative flag, disputed flag

🎯 Use Cases

• Fintech Competitive Intelligence — Track competitor complaint trends
• Compliance & Risk — Monitor systemic issues across financial institutions
• Law Firms — Identify class-action opportunities and patterns
• Journalism — Investigative reporting on consumer finance abuses
• Consumer Advocacy — Track complaint volumes by company, product, and state
• AI/ML Training — Clean, categorized datasets for NLP models

🔗 Data Source

CFPB Consumer Complaint Database — Public domain, no API key required. Updated daily.