President Donald Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is proposing changes to regulations surrounding debt collectors that would greatly increase their powers to call, text and email consumers.
The Washington Post reports that the new CFPB rule would let debt collectors call consumers seven times a week, although they are supposed to stop calling you for one week if they manage to get you on the phone to talk during one of those seven times.
Additionally, the rule changes would let debt collectors send an unlimited number of emails and text messages, which was something they previously did not have the power to do under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in 1977. People who don’t want to receive unlimited text messages have the option of telling individual debt collectors to stop, however.
These rule changes are beneficial to the debt-collection industry despite the fact that debt collectors are frequent subjects of complaints filed with the CFPB. According to the Post, the CFPB received more than 80,000 complaints about debt collectors last year alone.
“The proposal comes as the CFPB undergoes a radical makeover under the Trump administration. The number of cases filed against financial companies has plummeted, and the bureau has started rolling back some regulations — particularly on payday lenders,” the Post notes. “The bureau’s director, Kathy Kraninger, has laid out a business-friendly vision for the CFPB, including a focus on educating consumers to make better decisions and reducing ‘unwarranted’ regulatory burdens.”
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