Top 10 States by Consumer Credit Complaints

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Consumer Complaint Database aggregates submitted complaints across credit-related products including credit cards, mortgages, debt collection, and consumer loans. This ranking surfaces the top 10 U.S. states by total complaint volume as ingested into PlainCredit. Top 10 states account for 68.0% of all credit complaints in the dataset.Source: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints/

Top 10 by complaint volume

RankStateTotal ComplaintsPer 100,000 residentsTop CompanyTop Product
1 Florida
1,911,224
8,452.7 EQUIFAX, INC. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports
2 Texas
1,844,129
6,045.7 EQUIFAX, INC. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports
3 California
1,432,228
3,675.7 TRANSUNION INTERMEDIATE HOLDINGS, INC. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports
4 Georgia
1,043,662
9,462.7 EQUIFAX, INC. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports
5 New York
843,694
4,310.9 TRANSUNION INTERMEDIATE HOLDINGS, INC. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports
6 Illinois
605,020
4,821 TRANSUNION INTERMEDIATE HOLDINGS, INC. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports
7 Pennsylvania
573,166
4,422 EQUIFAX, INC. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports
8 North Carolina
478,763
4,418.5 EQUIFAX, INC. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports
9 New Jersey
459,998
4,951.1 EQUIFAX, INC. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports
10 Maryland
355,611
5,754 EQUIFAX, INC. Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports

Top 5 per-capita (complaints per 100,000 residents)

Volume-based rankings favor populous states. Per-capita normalization elevates smaller states with disproportionately high complaint concentration.

Top 5 states by complaints per 100,000 residents

CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, per-capita normalized

  1. 1
    Georgia 9,463 per 100K
    1,043,662 total complaints
  2. 2
    Florida 8,453 per 100K
    1,911,224 total complaints
  3. 3
    District of Columbia 7,527 per 100K
    51,105 total complaints
  4. 4
    Mississippi 6,771 per 100K
    199,038 total complaints
  5. 5
    Louisiana 6,563 per 100K
    300,172 total complaints

Source CFPB Consumer Complaint Database

Methodology

State complaint counts and per-capita rates are pre-computed from the CFPB raw complaint dataset by the PlainCredit ETL pipeline (filtered to credit-related products via standardized tags) and rendered live from the states table at SSR time. Per-capita rates use Census Bureau population estimates.Source: U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-state-total.html

Caveats and Limitations

Complaints represent submitted grievances, not adjudicated outcomes; volumes are influenced by consumer awareness and access to CFPB filing portals. Per-capita rates do not adjust for demographic factors (age, income, financial product penetration). Smaller states may be under-represented due to lower visibility. Cross-state activity (e.g., online lenders) complicates per-state attribution.