The more the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau highlights details about its consumer complaint database, the more industry associations make their own grievances about how the regulator constructs its reports, which are often critical of how providers are performing.

The American Financial Services Association emphasized that the information in the CFPB’s consumer complaint database is “not always correct and so is not reliable.”

AFSA executive vice president Bill Himpler recapped in a letter delivered to the bureau earlier this week that the CFPB had asked for feedback on best practices for “normalizing” the raw complaint data that the bureau makes available via the complaint database. The regulator contends the process is geared to make it is easier for the public to use and understand.

Himpler explained that to normalize data is to transform “raw” data so that it may be compared in meaningful ways. As an example, the CFPB said that providing the total number of complaints against an issuer of credit cards may offer limited opportunities to analyze that company against other credit card issuers. Providing additional information on the size of the issuer’s credit card business as compared to others provides another an aspect from which consumers may make better informed decisions.

“AFSA opposes the CFPB’s effort to normalize the complaint data for this simple reason — data normalization is only worth the effort if the data is reliable,” Himpler said in his latest letter to the CFPB that’s available here.

“The data in the database is not always correct and so is not reliable. Therefore, normalizing the incorrect data will not help better inform consumers, but instead will further misinform consumers,” Himpler added.

Instead of normalizing the data, AFSA recommended that the CFPB should focus on collecting better data. Himpler told the bureau that AFSA members receive complaints without vital information, such as the borrower’s address, property address, loan number, phone number or email.

“In order to solve this problem, more of the fields in the complaint form should be mandatory for the complaintant to complete. It would also be helpful for the categories on the complaint form to be more granular,” Himpler said.

“In short, normalizing the complaint data would be a great amount of work with likely little consumer benefit,” he continued. “If the CFPB decides to proceed with the effort to normalize the data, the CFPB should give everyone an opportunity to comment on the specific approach that the bureau proposes using.

“We understand that the CFPB has said that this would be the last opportunity to comment, but we respectfully request that the CFPB reconsider that position given the amount of work that companies would be required to perform to normalize their data,” Himpler went on to say.

Meanwhile, AFSA wasn’t the only industry organization to send its own complaint about the CFPB database normalization. The Consumer Bankers Association (CBA) had its own regulatory counsel, Kate Larson, deliver a long proposal to the CFPB, too.

“The CFPB has a fundamental duty to publish accurate, reliable information,” CBA president and chief executive officer Richard Hunt said. “Publishing out of context, unverified data will only mislead consumers. 

“As outlined in the letter CBA submitted, we urge the CFPB to shift their focus,” Hunt continued. “They must verify the data before they work to normalize it because only then will consumers truly benefit from the ‘complaints.’”

CBA’s complete recommendations can be seen here.