On Thursday, the FTC and CFPB held a joint roundtable titled Life of a Debt: Data Integrity in Debt Collection. Journalist Fred Williams has a report at the Taking Charge blog. An except: At Thursday's meeting, [debt buyer and industry association president Richard] Munroe and other debt buyers didn't repeat the argument the collection industry […]
Category Archives: Debt Collection
by Jeff Sovern Here. One surprise is that the regulator in question is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is showing still more evidence that it has escaped the clutches of the financial industry, which had captured the OCC in the past. An excerpt: The OCC’s investigation reflects the agency’s increasing focus […]
Dalie Jimenez of Connecticut has written Illegality in Consumer Debt Contracts and What to Do About it. Here's the abstract: Many of the contracts for the sale of consumer debts that are publically available contain “quitclaim” language disclaiming all warranties about the underlying debts sold or the information transferred, generally referring to the debts as […]
by Jeff Sovern Here (behind a paywall, unfortunately). The article implies that the Bureau will listen to collector phone calls (at least, that's how I interpret the statement that the Bureau will audit the "handling of phone calls"). That contrasts with what Fred Williams reported in his book Fight Back Against Unfair Debt Collection Practices (which […]
The CFPB has released its annual report on activities under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. You can read it here. The report summarizes consumer complaint data, the Bureau's new supervision program, amicus briefs, and enforcement actions (not much to report in that category), and significant enforcement and other actions taken by the FTC, among […]
by Jeff Sovern The American Banker has an interesting article titled CFPB Focuses on Consumer Choice – or Lack Thereof which discusses the speech Director Cordray gave to the Consumer Advisory Board last month (Allison blogged about it here). Excerpt from the article follow: [Cordray said] added, "When people cannot vote with their feet, their […]
The Symposium is in Chicago on Friday, April 5, 2013. Looks to be very interesting. More information here.
by Jeff Sovern Here. An excerpt: As with the mortgage cases, the investigation focuses on the banks' poor paperwork and their weak tracking of the debts. When they sold delinquent credit card debt to the buyers, often at only a few cents on the dollar, they allegedly failed to provide them with the evidence that […]
Dalie Jimenez of Connecticut, James Greiner of Harvard, Lois R. Lupica of Maine, & Rebecca L. Sandefur of the American Bar Foundationand Illinois have written Using a Randomized Control Trial to Accomplish Multiple Goals: An RCT Evaluating What Works for Individuals in Financial Distress, Investigating the Debt Collection System, Exploring Ways to Increase Access to […]
by Jeff Sovern Back in 2008, Fred Williams, a reporter for the Buffalo News who had written stories about debt collectors, worked as a debt collector for an upstate New York debt collection firm. Williams was not exactly undercover–he disclosed that he had written the stories–but it sounds as if he was treated as any […]