Credit Union National Association (CUNA) wrote to the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) ahead of their hearing on abusive debt collection practices to advocate against legislation that would expand the scope of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDPA) to first-party debt collectors.
“As not-for-profit, member-owned financial cooperatives, credit unions’ stakeholders are their members who have the ultimate interest in ensuring the credit union can take appropriate steps to collect debts owed by their fellow members. After all, credit union members will pay the cost of uncollected debts as well as the cost of debt collection practices through higher interest rates on loans, lower rates on savings and higher fees on products and services. Expanding the scope to creditors could have damaging affects including disrupting the ability to actively manage lending portfolios, increasing the cost of credit and reducing access to credit,” said CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle.
CUNA’s letter details how Congress limited the scope of the FCDPA to third-party collectors in recognition that a creditor-borrower relationship depends on maintaining goodwill long after the debt payment process has been concluded, and this dynamic has not changed.
Read the letter in full here.