The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Summary
The CFPB's Bureau Fund cost $699.1 million to run in FY2025 with 1,421 employees -- about $2.05 for every U.S. resident -- while its complaint pipeline closed roughly 5.4 million of the 6.6 million complaints consumers filed that year with an explanation or relief.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
The Bureau's statutory functions span education, complaints, research, supervision and enforcement, and rulemaking⧉. In 2025 it received 6,635,408 complaints and sent 5,984,100 -- 90% -- to more than 4,000 companies for review; 97% reached a company within a day, and companies answered over 99% on time, closing roughly 5,416,600 with an explanation or relief. It also reached 15.5 million people through education efforts and published 34 research products in FY2025⧉.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
The 's FY2025 Bureau Fund net cost of operations -- its audited cost of running the agency itself -- was $699.1 million⧉, apart from the Civil Penalty Fund's $165.6 million⧉ in victim-redress accounting, funded by penalties on wrongdoers, not the Fed. The Bureau drew $494 million in fresh FY2025 Federal Reserve transfers⧉ and closed the year with 1,421 employees, down 19% from 1,758 a year earlier⧉ amid Deferred Resignation Program departures. Against the Census Bureau's 341,784,857 U.S. residents, the Bureau Fund's cost works out to $2.05 per person.
View data as table
| Operations | 228,939,343 | 26.5% of net cost |
|---|---|---|
| Civil Penalty Fund | 165,617,195 | 19.2% of net cost -- funded by penalties on wrongdoers, not the Fed |
| Supervision | 141,644,287 | 16.4% of net cost |
| Research, Monitoring and Regulations | 76,153,354 | 8.8% of net cost |
| Other Programs | 75,862,637 | 8.8% of net cost |
| Enforcement | 74,398,504 | 8.6% of net cost |
| Consumer Response and Education | 63,428,288 | 7.3% of net cost |
| Legal | 26,589,626 | 3.1% of net cost |
| External Affairs | 12,042,041 | 1.4% of net cost |
Why is it good for society?
Before Dodd-Frank, consumer-protection authority was split across seven federal agencies⧉, and how closely a company was policed could depend on whether it was a bank. The 's founding statute targets that directly, requiring it to enforce consumer-financial law "consistently, without regard to the status of a person as a depository institution"⧉ -- a payday lender faces the same enforcement floor as a bank. That mandate produced a working channel in 2025: the complaint pipeline alone closed roughly 5.4 million of 6.6 million complaints with an explanation or relief, a forced-response mechanism most nonbank products had no federal equivalent of before 2011.
- The 's FY2025 Bureau Fund cost $699.1 million to operate -- $2.05 per U.S. resident -- while its complaint pipeline closed about 5.4 million of the 6.6 million complaints (82%) consumers filed that year with an explanation or relief.
- headcount fell to 1,421 employees by the close of FY2025, down 19% from 1,758 a year earlier, as employees exited through the Deferred Resignation Program.
Your handles.* Have a problem with a bank, lender, debt collector, or credit reporting company? Submit a complaint directly to the CFPB -- in 2025 the Bureau routed 90% of complaints to the company within a day. If you've tried the 's normal channels on a process issue and gotten nowhere, the CFPB Ombudsman's Office offers an independent, confidential route to a resolution. The 's own budget and funding structure are set by statute and reviewed at semiannual hearings before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and its House counterparts.
Sources(7) ▾
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Financial Report, Fiscal Year 2025 (2026-02-01) — The 's own audited annual financial report for fiscal year 2025 (October 1, 2024 - September 30, 2025), which earned its fifteenth consecutive unmodified (clean) audit opinion -- source for this entry's creation/funding-mechanism description, FY2025 net cost of operations by fund and by responsibility segment, Federal Reserve transfer amounts, employee headcount, and FY2025 performance metrics. files.consumerfinance.gov · original document
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Office of Consumer Response, Consumer Response Annual Report (January 1 - December 31, 2025) (2026-03-31) — The 's own statutory annual report on consumer complaints, filed under 12 U.S.C. 5493(b)(3)(C) -- source for this entry's 2025 complaint volume, routing, and resolution figures. Archive.org save request submitted 2026-07-16 but no snapshot had completed at time of publication; capture is non-blocking per this series' evidence rules, and the direct consumerfinance.gov URL is the citation. files.consumerfinance.gov
- Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives (uscode.house.gov), 12 U.S.C. Section 5491 -- Establishment of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (2025-01-01) — The current U.S. Code text -- source for the 's July 21, 2010 creation date, its establishment as an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve System, its status as an Executive agency, and the Director's presidential appointment/Senate confirmation and 5-year term. uscode.house.gov · original document
- Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives (uscode.house.gov), 12 U.S.C. Section 5511 -- Purpose, objectives, and functions (2025-01-01) — The current U.S. Code text -- source for the Bureau's statutory purpose, its five statutory objectives (including the bank/nonbank enforcement-consistency mandate), and its six primary functions (education, complaints, research, supervision/enforcement, rulemaking, support). uscode.house.gov · original document
- Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives (uscode.house.gov), 12 U.S.C. Section 5496 -- Appearances before and reports to Congress (2025-01-01) — The current U.S. Code text -- source for the Director's semiannual-hearing requirement before the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services and Energy and Commerce committees. uscode.house.gov · original document
- U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United States, Regions, States, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025 (NST-EST2025-POP) (2025-12-01) — The Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 national population estimate table -- source for the July 1, 2025 U.S. resident population figure used as this entry's per-person denominator. Archive.org save request submitted 2026-07-16 but no snapshot had completed at time of publication; capture is non-blocking per this series' evidence rules. The figure was independently downloaded and parsed directly from this workbook (not taken from a secondary summary), and is corroborated by the Census Bureau's own Vintage 2025 population-estimates press release rounding the same figure to 341.8 million. www2.census.gov
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Overview of Mission, Structure, and GAO Oversight (GAO-24-107512, testimony statement) (2024-04-19) — 's own testimony statement summarizing its financial and performance audits of the -- source for the fact that Dodd-Frank consolidated consumer financial protection authorities previously shared by seven federal agencies into one. gao.gov · original document
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The was created by Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act⧉, signed July 21, 2010 after the 2008 financial crisis, which consolidated consumer-protection authority shared by seven federal agencies into one⧉. It established the CFPB as "an independent bureau" inside the Federal Reserve System⧉, headed by a Director the President appoints to a 5-year Senate-confirmed term. Unlike most agencies, it is funded through capped Federal Reserve transfers, not congressional appropriations⧉; Congress's main check is semiannual hearings before the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees⧉.