Japan's FSA Penalizes GE Consumer Finance for Debt Collection Practice

by Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com

Japan’s financial watchdog, FSA, has taken things a step further, ordering GE Consumer Financial Ltd. to briefly suspend some operations. The suspension is intended to penalize the company for an inappropriate loan-collection call made to a borrower.

GE Consumer Finance, a unit of General Electric Co., has said in a prepared statement that it called a customer at work twice in April even though the customer asked not to receive such contact after the first call.

GE has claimed that the second call was an accident due to an internal miscommunication.

“If those administrative problems are left unsolved, there’s risk that similar illegal cases would happen again,” an FSA official briefing reporters said. “We want (the company) to halt its operations for some time and review its administration.”