Assistant Director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Servicemember Affairs Holly Petraeus educates junior enlisted airmen in Colorado Springs, Colo., about military consumer protections and financial readiness.


“Since we opened our doors, we’ve focused on making the financial mar- ketplace work for consumers,” Deputy Director David M. Dubois reported when the agency celebrated its fifth anniversary this past summer. “We’ve listened to [the military community’s] complaints about problems with … financial companies, created new consumer protections for financial products and services, and held bad actors accountable for breaking the law.” The agency also has created tools and identified resources designed to help servicemembers and their fami- lies navigate murky financial waters, whether they’re looking for a mort- gage, a student loan, or information about Social Security benefits. The CFPB has been in business for only five-and-a-half years. “We’re constantly trying to educate people


PHOTO: CFPB OFFICE OF SERVICEMEMBER AFFAIRS


about who we are and what we do, that we’re here to be a resource for them, and that they can file com- plaints,” Petraeus says. Word is getting around. Since opening for business in July 2011, the OSA has received complaints from all 50 states and from all branches and ranks of the military. From 2012- 13, the number of complaints in- creased by 148 percent. Last year, the CFPB received approximately 19,200 complaints from military person- nel, including active duty, National Guard, and Reserve troops, as well as veterans and family members. Nearly half of all complaints re-


ceived last year pertained to debt collection. In fact, servicemembers were twice as likely as the general population to file complaints about debt collection.


“There are some tactics that debt collectors tend to use against mili- tary personnel that are somewhat unique,” Petraeus explains. “A very effective threat — both for those cur- rently serving and for those who may be out but who have jobs that may require a security clearance — is to threaten that they will lose their se- curity clearance because of the debt. That works because for a lot of jobs in the military, if you don’t have the clearance, you can’t do the job.” Servicemembers also lodged com- plaints about mortgages (2,800) and credit reporting (2,200). Thirteen percent of debt-collection complaints had to do with medical debt. Since 2012, CFPB has been tasked with supervising payday lenders. In 2015, only 2.6 percent of the total number [CONTINUES ON PAGE 80]


DECEMBER 2016 MILITARY OFFICER 67


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