FDIC Banking Complaints Rose 21% in 2025. Credit Cards Led Investigated Cases
Consumer complaints and telephone inquiries involving banks supervised by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. rose 21% in 2025, with credit cards, checking accounts and credit reporting among the most common trouble spots identified in the agency’s review.
The FDIC said its Consumer Response Unit closed 32,128 written complaint and telephone-inquiry records in 2025, compared with 26,451 in 2024. The agency published its 2026 Consumer Compliance Supervisory Highlights on March 31, 2026. The report covers consumer-compliance issues identified during 2025 supervision of state non-member banks and thrifts.
What the FDIC counted
The 2025 total included 28,489 written complaints and 3,639 telephone inquiries. Of the written complaints, the FDIC retained and investigated 15,405. It referred 12,975 to other federal banking regulators because those agencies had jurisdiction, and made 109 additional internal referrals.
A referral does not mean the FDIC rejected a complaint on its merits. Federal banking regulators divide responsibility based on factors such as a bank’s charter, membership status and size. A complaint may therefore be sent to the agency with authority over the institution or issue.
Credit cards and checking accounts led investigated cases
Among the written complaints the FDIC investigated, credit cards were the largest product category, with 5,783 cases. Checking accounts followed with 3,106, installment loans and consumer lines of credit with 3,014, and other loans with 1,549.
Credit reporting was the leading issue identified in the report. Such a complaint may involve how information was furnished, corrected or handled by a bank or another entity involved in the transaction. The FDIC’s classification and handling of these complaints does not mean every case involved a violation by a bank.
Third-party providers appeared in 6,356 cases, nearly 48% more than in 2024. The figure shows how frequently vendors and service providers appeared in the complaint records, but their involvement alone does not establish misconduct by the provider or the financial institution.
What investigators found
FDIC investigations identified 280 financial-institution errors, 108 violations of federal consumer-protection regulations and 76 cases that required escalation to an FDIC regional office.
Those findings are specific to complaints investigated by the FDIC. They do not support a conclusion that banks broadly broke the law. Nor do the complaint totals represent a national rate of banking problems: They cover records handled by one regulator and are not a statistical sample of all consumers or institutions.
How to read complaint numbers
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says its own complaint database is not a statistical sample and is not necessarily representative of all consumers’ experiences. The bureau also advises readers to consider factors such as company size, market share and how consumers use a product when interpreting complaint volume.
The FDIC and CFPB systems cover different populations and use different referral rules. Their totals should not be combined as though they measured the same consumers, institutions or universe of complaints.
What bank customers can do
Consumers dealing with an account, credit-card or loan problem should first contact the financial institution and keep a dated record of the dispute. Save account statements, notices, screenshots, payment confirmations and copies of written communications.
If the institution does not resolve the issue, identify the bank’s primary federal regulator before filing a complaint. Credit-reporting disputes may require contacting the lender or other furnisher and the credit-reporting company through the applicable dispute process.
The FDIC and CFPB maintain official complaint and consumer-resource pages that can help customers find the appropriate next step. A complaint can help regulators identify patterns, but the number of complaints alone does not determine whether a company violated the law.
What to watch next
Future FDIC supervisory reports and enforcement actions will help show whether problems involving credit reporting, payment servicing, account administration or third-party providers continue to appear across supervised institutions.
Sources
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