debt collection

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On August 8, 2025, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) issued four advance notices of proposed rulemaking (“ANPR”) inviting comments on whether it should substantially reduce the number of nonbank companies the CFPB supervises in the auto finance, international money transfer, debt collection, and consumer credit reporting markets. An agency spokesperson told Law 360, “As part of President Trump’s overhaul of this abusive agency, ‘Larger Participant’ regulations are open for re-examining after more than a decade.… Continue Reading

The CFPB recently made filings with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regarding the following rules:

  • Loan Originator Compensation Requirements Under the Truth in Lending Act (Regulation Z).
  • Discretionary Servicing Rules under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (Regulation X).
  • Discretionary Mortgage Servicing Rules Under the Truth in Lending Act (Regulation Z).
… Continue Reading

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed legislation making it clear that debt collection emails sent between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. do not violate Florida law.

Those are the hours that debt collectors are prohibited from communicating with debtors. Now, emails are excluded from that prohibition.

“The bill includes preamble clauses that acknowledge emails were not commonly used or explicitly contemplated when the Florida Legislature prohibited the practice of communicating with a consumer at night,” a Florida Legislature memo explaining the bill states.… Continue Reading

A federal judge has ordered debt collector, Global Circulation Inc. (GCI) to temporarily halt operations, following an FTC complaint that alleged GCI tricked consumers into paying more than $7.6 million in bogus debt by threatening them with jail time, harassing their family members, and taking other unlawful actions.

U.S. District Judge Eleanor S.… Continue Reading

The most frequent consumer debt collection complaints filed with the CFPB in 2023 were attempts to collect debts that actually were not owed, the bureau said in its annual Fair Debt Collection Practices Act report.

The CFPB said that those complaints amounted to 53% of the debt collection complaints filed with the bureau in 2023.… Continue Reading

In November 2023, S.B. 668 was introduced in the Wisconsin Senate. S.B. 668 would make sweeping changes to the state laws governing financial service providers. The bill creates a pathway for the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions (DFI) to expand use of the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System and Registry (NMLS) across license types, modernizes money transmission laws, and revises the regulation of consumer lenders, collection agencies, check sellers, payday lenders, community currencies exchanges, sales finance companies, adjustment service companies, and insurance premium companies.… Continue Reading

The CFPB announced last week that it has entered into a consent order with Commonwealth Financial Systems, Inc. (Commonwealth), a third-party debt collection company that collects past-due medical debts and furnishes information about consumers to consumer reporting agencies (CRAs), to resolve Commonwealth’s alleged violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). … Continue Reading

The CFPB has issued its annual Fair Debt Collection Practices Act report covering the CFPB’s debt collection activities in 2022.  The report incorporates information from the FTC’s most recent annual letter to the CFPB describing its 2022 activities in the debt collection market.

CFPB Report. The CFPB report includes a “spotlight” section on the collection of medical bills. … Continue Reading

The CFPB announced at the end of last week that it had entered into a consent order with Phoenix Financial Services, LLC (Phoenix), a third-party debt collector that collects primarily past-due medical debts and furnishes information to consumer reporting agencies (CRAs), to settle alleged violations by Phoenix of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and its implementing Regulation V, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and the Consumer Financial Protection Act.  … Continue Reading

Third-party debt collectors, first-party creditors, and debt buyers face an ever-evolving federal and state regulatory landscape as well as ongoing private litigation.  We first look at the impact of the CFPB’s most recent rulemaking agenda on debt collectors.  We then discuss compliance and licensing issues under District of Columbia, California, Utah, and New York debt collection laws and the Wyoming “debt buyer” licensing requirement. … Continue Reading