CFPB Attorney Makes Explosive Allegations at House Hearing on Agency Culture

April 3, 2014 By Leave a Comment

An attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Wednesday accused the Bureau of fostering a “culture of retaliation and intimidation that silences employees and chills the workforce from exposing wrongdoing” in a hearing before a House Financial Services Subcommittee.

The hearing was called by Republicans in response to growing reports that the CFPB has issues with internal staffing and worker morale, especially concerning employee reviews. But after the CFPB declined to send representatives to testify, the hearing was focused on one employee and her ongoing dispute with the Bureau.

Angela Martin, an attorney in the agency’s enforcement division, has been embroiled in a battle with the CPFB since filing a complaint of discrimination and retaliation in December 2012. At the time, she was chief counsel in the CFPB’s Consumer Response unit, the group responsible for consumer complaints against financial firms.

Martin’s opening statement was focused on her experience with her personnel dispute with the Bureau. Not revealing what led to the initial complaint, she alleged that she has suffered severe retaliation due to it.

Martin alleged that while a complaint she brought through the Equal Employment Opportunity process was being dealt with, she received a phone call from CFPB Director Richard Cordray in August asking that she have her lawyers “back down” because he was trying to secure her a job in the bureau’s enforcement division. Martin contends she agreed to settle this complaint but then did not receive the job discussed because it had been given to somebody else. But she is currently identified as an attorney in the enforcement division, the job she was seeking.

Martin claimed that women and minorities suffered from the actions of a group of white managers, leading to a hostile work environment. Within the Consumer Response unit, Martin said there was an exodus of women and African-Americans who were replaced by white males. She claimed that the replacements were “cronies” of Scott Pluta, the assistant director of Consumer Response and Martin’s boss.

“It is regrettable that the details of a personnel issue so unrepresentative of conditions at the CFPB have been aired so publicly,” Pluta said in a statement. “Due to Ms. Martin’s privacy rights in an ongoing investigation, I am ethically and legally unable to make public the documents that would vindicate my actions. And despite the fact that my privacy rights and those of my staff have been so grossly trampled upon, I remain confident in the process and the Bureau.”

Martin testified that CFPB managers had hired only African-Americans to work at the consumer complaint intake unit within Consumer Response. She said that because only blacks worked at the unit, CFPB workers nicknamed it “the Plantation.”

“African-Americans tell me it is extremely hard to leave the Plantation,” Martin said. “You must be extremely savvy or you must be having somebody else to get you out.”

Democrats on the Subcommittee tried to persuade the Republican leadership to cancel the hearing once it was determined that it would focus solely on Martin, her individual claims, and hearsay from other employees. Democrats claimed that the focus and tone of the hearing had decidedly shifted and had taken on “more political motivation, to further disparage the CFPB.”

But Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif), the ranking Democrat in the subcommittee and a signatory to the letter, appeared moved by Martin’s story. She did not ask any questions, saying, “I’d like to yield back the balance of my time to Ms. Martin so she can just continue talking to us.”

 

CFPB Attorney Makes Explosive Allegations at House Hearing on Agency Culture
http://www.insidearm.com/daily/collection-laws-regulations/collection-laws-and-regulations/cfpb-attorney-makes-explosive-allegations-at-house-hearing-on-agency-culture/
http://www.insidearm.com/feed
insideARM

Accounts Receivable Management

Filed Under: News

Panel of CFPB, OCC, and FTC Regulators Addresses Banker Questions

April 3, 2014 By Leave a Comment

On Tuesday, Senior Vice President at Wells Fargo Bank Larry Tewell moderated a discussion titled “Implications for Default Management” among a panel of regulators at the Consumer Bankers Association national conference, CBA Live. The panel included:

  • Daniel Dwyer, Attorney in the Division of Financial Practices at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
  • Grovetta Gardineer, Deputy Comptroller for Compliance Policy in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)
  • Tom Pahl, Managing Counsel in the Office of Regulations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

The OCC’s November 2013 guidance for managing risks associated with third-party relationships was an early focus of the conversation. Gardineer explained that, while not official policy, this was really a “re-fresh” of existing guidance and came as a result of their surprise over the fact that management of third-parties hadn’t yet become something that institutions thought (or at least demonstrated) was important to do. She reminded the audience that the OCC wants to see attention to the whole cycle of a relationship, and not just a one-time box check exercise at the time of contract.

Related to the prevalence of complaints lodged about debt collection attempts made to the wrong person or about the wrong amount, Tewell asked the panel to shed light on the disconnect between industry data, which tells CBA members that 98% of their data is right… yet “the next day” in the hands of a third-party it becomes wrong.

Tom Pahl responded that they are learning how problems arise up and down the chain. He noted there are many potential causes over time, and they are seeking to understand which might be appropriate to address with regulation. One thing they are looking at is whether there should be standard documents required for sale, and how/whether those need to vary based on debt type.

Dan Dwyer – a primary author of the FTC’s 2013 study on debt buying – said their research found that many buyers didn’t receive dispute data or a breakdown of the balance by original amount, interest, and fees. He raised the concept of “prior substantiation” that the claims you are making are accurate.

Moving on, Tewell asked Pahl to describe the process for vetting the thousands of comments received by the CFPB in response to its ANPR on debt collection. His overview:

  1. The team is in the process of reviewing and summarizing the comments
  2. Follow up with various commenters, academics, and others to fill in gaps and see how discrepancies might be resolved
  3. Conduct a large scale consumer survey in an attempt to infuse data (versus solely anecdotal/experiential input) into the process
  4. Also considering disclosure testing
  5. With the above inputs, we will outline where we are going
  6. Conduct a SBREFA panel (here is an example) to evaluate potential effects on small business
  7. Put out a report on what we’ve found through the SBREFA panel and what we will do about it
  8. Put out a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR), with the text of proposed rules, for comment

While Pahl couldn’t specify an exact timeline, it was clear to all in the room that this would not be a swift process.

Worthy of note: Regarding disclosure testing, Mr. Pahl didn’t elaborate on a proposed process, but Tewell informally asked the audience for a show of hands for who will be volunteering to participate. Not a hand in the crowd was raised. While this of course was not an official request or response, it underscores the challenge of true live testing in a litigious environment. A similar response has been provided by many collection agencies who would like to participate, but feel at the end of the day that the risk of lawsuits over technical FDCPA violations is too great.

The panel also addressed the topic of communicating with consumers through newer technology than allowed by current law. Dwyer commented that he does believe consumers should be able to communicate [with collectors] in new and preferred ways, with the caveats that collectors can’t deceive, they must give proper disclosure, they can’t disclose to third-parties, and consumers can’t be charged for the communication.

Tom Pahl agreed, but added that collectors need to be able to communicate in order to resolve debts, and no methods are inherently off the table. He said we need to look at each communication, in each context, identify what kinds of risks there are, and how to address those risks.

Panel of CFPB, OCC, and FTC Regulators Addresses Banker Questions
http://www.insidearm.com/daily/collection-laws-regulations/collection-laws-and-regulations/panel-of-cfpb-occ-and-ftc-regulators-addresses-banker-questions/
http://www.insidearm.com/feed
insideARM

Accounts Receivable Management

Filed Under: News

The Big 4 Service-Level Goals for Top Healthcare Orgs in 2014

March 27, 2014 By Leave a Comment

2014-03-big-4-service-level-goals-coverIt’s more difficult to measure how well a healthcare business office is functioning now that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has come to bear.

That’s because in today’s healthcare finance landscape, the old standards revenue cycle managers used to measure performance have largely been superseded by metrics that focus on the patient. The patient, even more than the insurance carrier, has become the central figure in healthcare financial management.

You must be logged in to download free reports.
If you don’t have an account yet, registration is free and simple.

Ontario Systems‘ new whitepaper, The Big 4 Service-Level Goals for Top Healthcare Orgs in 2014, lays out the four goals and the steps needed to achieve them.

The Big 4 Service-Level Goals for Top Healthcare Orgs in 2014
http://www.insidearm.com/freemiums/the-big-4-service-level-goals-for-top-healthcare-orgs-in-2014/
http://www.insidearm.com/feed
insideARM

Accounts Receivable Management

Filed Under: News

Debt Collector Wins Appeal in Precedential Letter Language Case

March 27, 2014 By Leave a Comment

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday upheld a lower court judgment in an FDCPA case against a collection agency over the use of the word “of” rather than “after” in the validation notice in a debt collection letter.

In Wallace v. Diversified Consultants, Inc., Diversified Consultants wrote to Carl Wallace that it would assume the validity of a debt unless he disputed it “within 30 days of receiving this notice.” Seizing on the use of “of” in the letter in contrast to the use of “after” — as outlined in section 1692g(a)(3) of  the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act — Wallace sued Diversified.

Judge Robert H. Cleland, U.S. District Judge in the Eastern District of Michigan, sided with Diversified and granted the company judgment on the pleadings. Wallace appealed to the Sixth Circuit.

In discussing the case in its opinion, the three-judge panel noted that a collector need not parrot the FDCPA to comply with it. “A statement works if it speaks with enough clarity to convey the required information to a reasonable but unsophisticated consumer,” the unanimous panel wrote. “The letter to Wallace did that. It informed him that he had thirty days to dispute the debt, that the clock would start running when he received the letter (rather than, say, when Diversified sent the letter), and that if he did not act the collector would assume the debt’s validity.”

Wallace argued that “of” and “after” are different words, and that they can bear different meanings. The judges agreed, but noted that “this possibility does not make Diversified’s choice of preposition improper. No reasonable consumer, even an unsophisticated one, would read the letter as an instruction to travel back in time (though no more than thirty days back) to dispute the debt.”

The judges also conceded that both “within thirty days of receiving notice” and “within thirty days after receiving notice” are ambiguous about when to start counting. But they said that even if the plaintiff had argued a different point, the result likely would have been the same.

“Does this mean that Wallace would have won had he taken aim, not at the choice of preposition, but at the absence of a clarifying parenthetical—had he argued the letter should have read, ‘within thirty days of receiving this notice (not counting the day of receipt)’? We doubt it. A collector complies with the law so long as it effectively conveys the information specified in the statutory text, and the text says nothing about whether the day of receipt counts.”

The panel affirmed the lower court’s judgment and submitted the opinion for publication.

 

Debt Collector Wins Appeal in Precedential Letter Language Case
http://www.insidearm.com/daily/debt-collection-news/debt-collection/debt-collector-wins-appeal-in-precedential-letter-language-case/
http://www.insidearm.com/feed
insideARM

Accounts Receivable Management

Filed Under: News

Multi-Stakeholder Panel Discusses Debt Collection Voicemail, Compliance Cost, and Dispute Handling

March 27, 2014 By Leave a Comment

Earlier this week insideARM CEO and publisher Stephanie Eidelman moderated a panel discussion at SourceMedia’s National Collections & Operational Risk conference in Miami.

The panel, entitled “Collaborative Resolution to Long Standing Collection Challenges” was a discussion among the many stakeholders in the collection process, and included:

  • Will Lund, Superintendent, Maine Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection (regulator perspective)

  • Patricia Hasson, President, Clarifi (consumer perspective)

  • Tim Bauer, CEO, Integrity Solution Services (collector perspective)

  • Craig Patterson, VP BPO Management, GM Financial (creditor perspective)

  • Paula-Rose Stark, Senior Principal, Promontory Financial Group (consultant – representing both creditor and regulator perspective)

The group covered three topics at the center of today’s regulatory dialogue: voicemail messages, the cost of compliance in general, and the intertwined issues of data availability and dispute handling.

Stephanie Eidelman began the discussion around voicemail messages by offering the following pre-Foti style message proposed by the Consumer Relations Consortium in its ANPR response, and asked panelists to comment on its merits:

“Hello, this is Jane Smith calling to speak with John Doe. This concerns an important personal matter. Please call back at 800-555-1212 and reference account number 12345. Thank you.”

Patricia Hasson noted that she could live with this if there could also be some assurance that it would limit/stop additional calls. She raised the point that a limit such as the 3 calls per week (and one voicemail) proposed by the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) in its ANPR response might seem reasonable (or even low to some) but we need to remember that consumers who are being contacted by one agency may often be in collections with multiple agencies at once, collecting on various debts.

Will Lund commented that the proposed message doesn’t appear deceptive, doesn’t contain intentional disclosure, and would be preferable to a hang up.

Craig Patterson added that it’s up to the creditor to have creative alternatives to offer consumers when they are able to make contact by phone, in order to help resolve accounts and reduce the number of necessary communications.

The cost of compliance discussion raised the issue of the importance of balancing the clear benefits of compliance to all stakeholders with the practicality of managing numerous simultaneous audit requests.

Tim Bauer commented that his firm is so focused on responding to individual, and non-standard, requests for policies and procedures from clients and regulators that they are challenged to test their compliance since they have yet to experience steady-state operations.

Will Lund noted that private civil actions over technicalities are as frustrating to his office as they are to the industry. With their limited resources, they’d much rather focus on weeding out truly bad actors. Active in the leadership of NACARA (North American Collection Agency Regulatory Association), he also noted that Maine generally follows Federal guidelines and encourages his colleagues in other states to do the same, rather than develop custom/additional rules.

P-R Stark added that this shared burden across the collection ecosystem represents a critical collaborative opportunity. All panelists – as well as members of the audience – agreed that industry-wide standards for data security and other core policies would help immensely to decrease complexity, reduce errors, and increase efficiency across all levels of the compliance chain.

With respect to data availability, panelists raised the issue of complexity associated with so much human intervention in the process of accurately recording and processing data, in both the 3rd party collector and creditor domains.

There are many details relating to every single consumer interaction that must be recorded without error by thousands of collectors, while on the phone, often in a pressured situation. Absolute consistency – even with the best of intentions – is a practical challenge. Notwithstanding this challenge, there was agreement that information such as the fact that a consumer has disputed the debt or exercised her right to cease communications should be shared from creditor to collector, and on to each company that handles or owns the account.

Multi-Stakeholder Panel Discusses Debt Collection Voicemail, Compliance Cost, and Dispute Handling
http://www.insidearm.com/opinion/multi-stakeholder-panel-discusses-debt-collection-voicemail-compliance-cost-and-dispute-handling/
http://www.insidearm.com/feed
insideARM

Accounts Receivable Management

Filed Under: News

CFPB Speech to Chamber of Commerce Hints at Direction of Collection Rulemaking

March 20, 2014 By Leave a Comment

CFPB Deputy Director Steve Antonakes yesterday discussed debt collection rulemaking noting that his agency is particularly concerned that “the accuracy of account information degrades as it is passed on from the original creditor to debt collection firms or debt buyers.”

In a speech Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 8th Annual Capital Markets Summit, Antonakes noted that while the collection of consumer debts serves an important role in the proper functioning of consumer credit markets, “certain debt collection practices have long been a source of frustration for many consumers, generating a heavy volume of consumer complaints at all levels of government.”

Antonakes commented that assuring debt collectors are contacting the right consumers about the right debt is a top priority for the CFPB in its rulemaking activity after the closure of the comment period on its advance notice of proposed rulemaking for debt collection.

The remarks mirror those made by Antonakes last week in a speech at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition Annual Conference.

The speech at the Chamber of Commerce event also noted that consumer complaints “are not only opportunities for us to assist specific people; they also make a difference by informing our work and helping us identify areas of concern, which then feed into our supervision and enforcement prioritization process.” Antonakes said that debt collection accounts for the largest volume of complaints, with the CFPB receiving around 6,200 each month.

At the close of his remarks, a member of the Chamber told Antonakes that his group’s one recommendation to the Bureau is that the rulemaking process “could be slower” to ensure the proper rules are written.

Yesterday also marked the release of the Chamber of Commerce’s 2014 Regulatory Reform Report Card, which grades whether regulatory reform is working or not — specifically for Main Street.

CFPB Speech to Chamber of Commerce Hints at Direction of Collection Rulemaking
http://www.insidearm.com/daily/debt-buying-topics/debt-buying/cfpb-speech-to-chamber-of-commerce-hints-at-direction-of-collection-rulemaking/
http://www.insidearm.com/feed
insideARM

Accounts Receivable Management

Filed Under: News

Utilizing Artificial Intelligence to Ensure Right Party Contact

March 20, 2014 By Leave a Comment

In an era of heightened regulatory scrutiny of collection practices, implementing effective process controls, training and staff monitoring are more critical than ever.  It seems that the regulations governing the ARM industry change almost weekly, and with audit and supervision authority now in place from one of the most powerful government agencies to ever be established, ensuring total compliance in all areas of collection operations is not only critical, but the ongoing operation of the business depends upon it.

While determining right party contact is not a new requirement by any means, emerging technologies can now provide enhanced tools and capabilities to ensure compliance relating to right party contact.  Recently,  the Quantrax Corporation announced the deployment of their “Right Party Contact Console,” something their Director of Operations Debbie Collins described as “Unique and exciting technology that will reinvent the collection industry.”  Utilizing artificial intelligence technology, the Right Party Contact Console is the latest enhancement to the Receivables Management Expert system from Quantrax.

Recently, Phillip Duff, CEO of Lighthouse Consulting, Inc., sat down with Debbie Collins to learn more about this new advancement in Right party Contact technology.

PD – Quantrax has described this new solution as the greatest innovation since the predictive dialer. The predictive dialer has been around for a long time. Why do you say there has been a lack of innovation for so many years?

DC – The industry has made lots of progress in many areas. We’ve gone from automating the card system to some very powerful collection systems. But how many applications have truly leveraged the power of computers to address a major business need in undiscovered ways? Of course, we’ve said that our “intelligent software” was the last great invention. This is the latest!

PD – What major business need did you set out to address?

DC – Quickly obtaining contact with the right party is the most important thing we have to do in collections. Today, everyone uses powerful dialers, but have as many as 6 or 7 potential numbers per account. How does everyone do it? It’s a time consuming, manual process and we saw need to address the problem utilizing more sophisticated technology.

PD – What did Quantrax do?

DC – We allow the user to separate consumer (home, work and cell phone) and third party numbers. You specify the strategy for the order in which those numbers should be attempted. You tell the system how you divide the day into different “time windows”. Instead of working the consumer, you work the phone numbers. Each number will be attempted multiple times, at different times in the day. You will never have one number being attempted only during the morning, or some numbers not being attempted at all.

PD – Don’t agents usually place calls when they want to?

DC – Yes. Therein lays the problem.  Agents are human and therefore fallible.  When it comes to ensuring regulatory compliance, you just can’t rely on fallible humans to ensure process controls are followed and myriad federal, state and municipal regulations with respect to telephone communications are being adhered to.

While right party contact is just a small part of this piece of the regulatory puzzle, utilizing a system that deploys artificial intelligence tools in a rules driven manner is more effective, more compliant and saves time.  There has to be a shift in the paradigm; where the system presents the right number to call at the right time of day, managing not only the best strategy for right party contact, but all of the regulatory issues relating to TCPA, state and local laws as well.  No human collector will ever be able to manage this multi layer-hierarchy efficiently and always get it right.

PD – Since you mentioned the TCPA.  What about calling cell phones?

DC – If the next number to be called is a cell phone, the system automatically moves the account into a different campaign based on the rules and logic defined.  This happens dynamically in real time. This is the power of utilizing artificial intelligence.

PD – What type of productivity gains are you expecting?

DC – In the collection environment today, margins are thinner and thinner and everyone is trying squeeze margins ever place they can.  Even calls that receive no answer wastes valuable time and resources. Utilizing an Intelligent Collection System can significantly reduce or eliminate wasted call attempts, and for the first time, ensure uniform attention to all of the potential numbers. Experts who have understood what we have done are optimistic about getting to a right party contact at least 30% faster than they presently do. This will translate to faster collections and potential increases of over 20% or more in gross collections.

PD – You think this is ground-breaking technology?

DC – Of course! When was the last time technology gave you a 30% gain in the most important area of collection operations, without adding a dime to your costs?

Utilizing Artificial Intelligence to Ensure Right Party Contact
http://www.insidearm.com/receivables-management-expert/utilizing-artificial-intelligence-to-ensure-right-party-contact/
http://www.insidearm.com/feed
insideARM

Accounts Receivable Management

Filed Under: News

FTC to Sue Payday Lender Claiming Tribal Affiliation; Previously Settled Collection Charges

March 20, 2014 By Leave a Comment

U.S. District Judge Gloria M. Navarro handed the Federal Trade Commission a significant victory in its crackdown on deceptive payday lenders, affirming a magistrate judge’s finding that the defendants in its AMG Services case are within the reach of FTC enforcement actions, even if they are affiliated with American Indian tribes.

District Judge Navarro ruled that Magistrate Judge V. Cam Ferenbach, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, correctly found that the FTC Act “grants the FTC authority to regulate arms of Indian tribes, their employees, and their contractors.”

“This ruling makes it crystal clear that the FTC’s consumer protection laws apply to businesses that are affiliated with tribes,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.  “It’s a strong signal to deceptive payday lenders that their days of hiding behind a tribal affiliation are over.”

The FTC has sued a number of payday lenders for engaging in unfair and deceptive practices against consumers. The FTC alleged that these lenders, like AMG Services, have employed deception and other illegal conduct to take advantage of financially distressed consumers seeking loans.

When the FTC sued the defendants behind AMG Services in 2012, they argued that they were exempt from FTC enforcement because of their affiliation with American Indian tribes.  They argued that the FTC lacked authority to enforce the FTC Act, the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), and Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA) against tribes and tribal businesses. The AMG defendants have likewise previously claimed immunity from state legal proceedings, despite their tenuous connections to American Indian tribes.

But in a report and recommendation issued in July 2013, Magistrate Judge Ferenbach disagreed. Magistrate Judge Ferenbach found that payday lenders cannot avoid key federal consumer protection statutes simply by aligning themselves with American Indian tribes. He concluded that the FTC Act has “broad reach” and applies generally, giving the agency “the authority to bring suit against Indian Tribes, arms of Indian Tribes, and employees and contractors of arms of Indian Tribes.”  The magistrate judge likewise found that the FTC has authority to bring its TILA and EFTA claims. The March 7, 2014 ruling by Judge Navarro affirms the magistrate judge’s findings.

The FTC alleged that the defendants violated the FTC Act by piling on undisclosed and inflated fees, and by threatening borrowers in debt collection calls with arrest and lawsuits.  The FTC also alleged that the defendants violated TILA by giving inaccurate loan information to borrowers, and violated EFTA by requiring consumers to preauthorize electronic withdrawals from their bank accounts as a condition of obtaining credit.  According to documents filed by the FTC, the defendants’ deceptive and illegal tactics generated thousands of complaints to law enforcement authorities. In many cases, the defendants’ inflated fees left borrowers with supposed debts of more than triple the amount they had borrowed.

The Federal Trade Commission reached a partial settlement on other issues last year with the principal AMG defendants. The settlement bars the settling defendants from using threats of arrest and lawsuits as a tactic for collecting debts, and from requiring all borrowers to agree in advance to electronic withdrawals from their bank accounts as a condition of obtaining credit. The FTC continues to litigate other charges against the AMG defendants, including allegations that they deceived consumers about the cost of their loans by charging undisclosed charges and inflated fees. In a separate decision issued on January 28, 2014, Magistrate Judge Ferenbach found that AMG’s loan documents were deceptive and violated the FTC Act and TILA. That ruling is now before District Judge Navarro.

FTC to Sue Payday Lender Claiming Tribal Affiliation; Previously Settled Collection Charges
http://www.insidearm.com/daily/collection-laws-regulations/ftc-to-sue-payday-lender-claiming-tribal-affiliation-previously-settled-collection-charges/
http://www.insidearm.com/feed
insideARM

Accounts Receivable Management

Filed Under: News

POLL: Does your company send privacy notices to consumers?

March 20, 2014 By Leave a Comment

POLL: Does your company send privacy notices to consumers?
http://www.insidearm.com/poll/does-your-company-send-privacy-notices-to-consumers/
http://www.insidearm.com/feed
insideARM

Accounts Receivable Management

Filed Under: News

Understanding Compliance Obligations of Calling Cell Phones in Legal Collections

March 13, 2014 By Leave a Comment

Ranjan Dharmaraja

Ranjan Dharmaraja

Legal collections provides its own set of unique complexities and challenges. Recent changes to the TCPA and a heightened focus on regulatory issues facing the debt collection industry make it more important than ever for collection agencies and collection law firms in particular to have policies and operational procedures in place to ensure compliance with these recent changes to the TCPA.  While we need to focus on this challenge at hand, it is not enough to merely create the policies.  Careful thought to effectively implement and train to the policies is critical to ensure compliance.

But sometimes, training and implementation is not enough.  Humans are, well…, humans; and as humans they are fallible beings.  Ensuring total compliance with the TCPA as well as state and local rules for telephone numbers, work numbers and cell phone numbers must be managed with technology to ensure collectors cannot violate the policies set forth by the agency or law firm.

Recent regulations have been issued, but this will not be the final word on cell phones.  While federal regulators may set forth specific regulations, state regulators and even municipalities may also introduce their own regulations.  Furthermore, your clients placing accounts with you for collections may also have individual SOP’s you are required to follow that go beyond regulatory requirements.  So with all of these conflicting regulations and policies, how in the world can anyone manage calling rules to a level of 100% compliance?

The answer is that it takes a collection system that is intelligent, and built on a platform that incorporates artificial intelligence technology capable of processing multiple levels of rules, policies and regulations.

With the Receivables Management System from Quantrax, the process is simple and straightforward.  First, you need to start by accurately identifying cell phones and land lines.

  • We have access to cell phone data bases (cell block and ported numbers)
  • This information can be used do an initial scrub of all phone numbers on the system
  • Ported number data can be used to update phone numbers based on recent changes

When accounts are worked and new numbers are obtained, it is important that new information is scrubbed in real-time. Why? What if a consumer gives you a cell number when they are asked for their home number? What should happen?

  • We notify the agent that the number entered in the home phone is a cell phone
  • The agent reviews this with the consumer and moves the number into the cell phone field
  • The system asks the agent to confirm that they have permission to call the cell phone
  • Agent confirms this and the account is notated that permission to call the cell phone was obtained

These simple steps make sure that important compliance guidelines are followed.

What about working accounts with cell phones? The following features help manage this important area.

  • Accounts with cell phones can be separated from accounts without cell phones
  • There is a field to indicate that permission was obtained to call a cell phone
  • You can stop cell phones from being called through predictive campaigns
  • Any calls to a cell phone (even preview dialing) can be stopped
  • The number of calls to a cell phone can be limited based on rules set up for the day or different periods of time
  • Calls to a cell phone can be routed though the PBX – this will be documented and it can be proved that the call was not made by an “automated dialer”

Good cell phone management in collections is complex. With good design, we believe that that the process can be user-friendly, simple and effective. This is important in an area that has the potential for expensive litigation and future regulation.

 

Understanding Compliance Obligations of Calling Cell Phones in Legal Collections
http://www.insidearm.com/receivables-management-expert/understanding-compliance-obligations-of-calling-cell-phones-in-legal-collections/
http://www.insidearm.com/feed
insideARM

Accounts Receivable Management

Filed Under: News
« Previous Page
Next Page »