Top 10 US Debt Collectors by CFPB Consumer Complaint Volume

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) consumer-complaint database ranking the debt-collection companies that accumulate the highest absolute volume of consumer complaints. PlainCollector renders the ranking server-side from a live SELECT against the companies table.

Research period:

Research question

Across the 5,000+ debt-collection companies tracked in the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, which carry the highest absolute volume of consumer complaints, and how do those complaint volumes correlate with the bureau's timely-response and dispute rates?

Methodology

This ranking reflects the data currently in our database, sourced from the agency referenced in the citation below and updated automatically as new filings are processed.

Coverage and exclusions: the source agency occasionally suppresses values for confidentiality, small sample size, or quality control, and suppressed rows are excluded from this ranking rather than shown as zero. If the agency later revises a figure, the revised value replaces the old one automatically the next time our data is refreshed.

Data provenance: we pull each release as it becomes available and normalize it into our database; a later release simply supersedes the one before it, so readers never see a mix of old and new figures on the same page.

Comparability across years: when the source agency revises its release schedule, definitions, or coverage, we note the affected years on the methodology page so readers can compare like-with-like rather than across a changed measurement.

Editorial governance: this page is generated programmatically from the CFPB dataset described above, not hand-authored or individually reviewed - editorial work goes into the pipeline, methodology, and corrections process (see our editorial policy). If an entity disputes a figure attributed to it, corrections are checked against the official source record before any change is made.

Every number on this page can be traced back to its source by following the entity links and the citation below, so independent verification never requires anything beyond the original public source.

See the methodology page for the complete ETL pipeline, source vintage, and column lineage.

Top 10 US Debt Collectors by CFPB Consumer Complaint Volume

Live data: reflects the current dataset

complaints
Source U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau As of 2013–2026

The ranked top 10

Every row below reflects the current 10-record dataset. Reload the page after new data is processed to see the latest values.

Based on consumer-filed CFPB complaints, not proven violations or a court finding of wrongdoing. Complaint volume also tracks company size, a larger collector will naturally rank higher regardless of its actual conduct.

# Company Total CFPB complaints Last 12 months Reputation grade
1 Transunion Intermediate Holdings, Inc. 56,286 17,761 D
2 Equifax, Inc. 55,160 17,512 D
3 Encore Capital Group Inc. 50,437 18,209 D
4 Experian Information Solutions Inc. 50,287 14,628 D
5 Resurgent Capital Services L.P. 49,061 18,544 D
6 Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC 48,745 16,491 D
7 CL Holdings LLC 37,522 20,433 D
8 CCS Financial Services, Inc. 21,515 8,827 F
9 I.C. System, Inc. 18,629 5,990 D
10 Capital ONE Financial Corporation 17,106 3,932 D

Source: U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CFPB Consumer Complaint Database (debt-collection product). Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed. U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CFPB Consumer Complaint Database (debt-collection product). Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed.

Findings

Top entity in the ranking

The top-ranked record in this dataset is Transunion Intermediate Holdings, Inc., with a value of 56,286 on the Total CFPB complaints column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the source agency publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.

Distribution shape

The gap between the top-ranked record (56,286) and the 10th-ranked record (17,106) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.

Aggregate context

Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.

Source provenance

The records in this ranking originate from U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, specifically the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database (debt-collection product). PlainCollector ingests the source vintage published by the agency and keeps this page current, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published dataset is reflected here within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the steps applied to prepare the data.

Why this ranking matters

Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.

What this analysis cannot tell us

CFPB complaint counts are administrative records of complaints submitted by consumers, not adjudicated findings of misconduct. A complaint represents a consumer's report of an experience the consumer perceived as problematic; it does not establish that the company violated law, regulation, or contractual obligation. Higher absolute complaint volumes generally correlate with larger portfolio sizes, a debt collector handling millions of consumer accounts will accumulate more complaints in absolute terms than a collector handling thousands of accounts, even at the same per-account complaint rate. The CFPB does not publish portfolio size in the complaint database, so per-account normalization is not feasible from this dataset alone. The timely-response and dispute percentages are computed from CFPB-published response data and reflect the company's handling of complaints once filed, which is a separable signal from the complaint-generation rate. Reputation grades displayed in this ranking are computed by PlainCollector from CFPB-published signals using a documented composite score; the methodology page lists the input signals and their relative weights.

Secondary cut from the same source

Top 10 collection companies by recent (12-month) complaint volume

complaints
Source U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau As of 2013–2026

Related data

Sources

Every figure on PlainCollector is rendered directly from federal source data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on federal source data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.