ARM Industry Well-Represented at FTC FDCPA Workshop

The Federal Trade Commission released late yesterday the full agenda for its debt collection/FDCPA workshop scheduled for October 10-11 in Washington, D.C. In addition to the specific chronological workshop schedule, the FTC also released the names of panel participants and presenters. The updated agenda can be found at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/debtcollection/agenda.pdf.

The workshop will “explore changes in the debt collection industry and examine their impact on consumers and businesses,” according to the FTC. The workshop will try to determine if the 30-year-old Fair Debt Collection Practices Act has kept pace with a changing business and technological environment.

The workshop will cover two full days and is broken out into a series of exclusive panels, all moderated by FTC staff. According to Thomas Kane, senior attorney in the agency’s financial practices division, the panels are designed to give a voice to each of the three major stakeholders in the debt collection process: collectors, consumers, and creditors.

The collection industry will be well-represented with panelists from the trade group ACA International, debt purchasing association DBA International, the National Association of Retail Collection Attorneys, OSI, two publicly traded debt purchasers Portfolio Recovery Associates and Encore Capital Group, and others.

Representing the consumer view will be panelists from the National Consumer Law Center, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, and others.

Creditor community panelists include the American Bankers Association, Ford Motor Credit Co., Resource Management Services, and others.

The first day of the workshop will concentrate on giving an overview of the debt collection industry from inception to present. The first two panels, “Overview of Changes in and Affecting the Industry” and “Debt Collection Today: Understanding the Business” will focus on history and current practices in the industry. The next three panels will give representatives from each of the stakeholders an opportunity to air concerns about debt collection.

On the second day of the workshop, the discussions will “drill down into a few of the most common complaints the FTC hears regarding collections,” said Kane. Panels will cover the identification of debtors – commonly called skiptracing, verification by collectors of debts owed by consumers, credit reporting concerns, and the growing number of complaints surrounding collection litigation.

Most of the panels, and all of the ones concerning specific complaints, will have representatives from the ARM industry. Gary Wood, president of DBA International and president of Collins Financial Services, Inc., applauded the FTC’s organization of the workshop.

“We are very excited that the FTC is doing it this way,” Wood told insidARM.com. “So often in Washington, decisions are made without input from those most affected. I think this [workshop structure] is a great idea.”

Wood will be one of the participants on the final panel of the workshop, “Pivotal Issues and Proposed Solutions: Next Steps.” This panel will serve to wrap up the ideas presented over the course of the workshop and address proposals for changes in the FDCPA that have already been made.

Kane pointed out that the FTC has made proposals for changes in the FDCPA in its yearly report to Congress for the past three years. Additionally, ACA International proposed a series of changes to the FDCPA in its response in June to the FTC’s request for comment in advance of the workshop.