The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau maintains an online portal for consumers to submit complaints across a wide variety of regulated industries, including credit reporting, background screening, and debt collection.  The CFPB has announced that it will upgrade its online portal system in early 2017.  The CFPB has released a preview document, which states that the changes are designed to “provide a better user experience and tools that help make it easier and faster for [entities] to respond to consumers.”   

The changes include a new “dashboard” to improve access and control for individual companies and entities, simplified data entry for responses, expanded character limits for text boxes, better searching and exporting tools, timestamps to better track responses, and the addition of term definitions within the workspace.  There presently is no timeline for implementation of the upgrades.   

Troutman Sanders will continue to monitor the CFPB and its practices regarding consumer complaints, as well as its processes and mandates by which companies must respond to such complaints submitted through the online portal.