WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has released its 2020 annual report to Congress on the administration of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).
According to the Bureau, the report highlights efforts by the CFPB and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect consumers, particularly those who have suffered profound financial impacts due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The CFPB and the FTC, along with state and federal partners, accomplished much toward stopping unlawful debt collection practices and continuing its vigorous law enforcement, consumer education and public outreach, and policy initiatives,” the CFPB stated.
The CFPB stated that during 2020 it engaged in four public enforcement actions arising from alleged FDCPA violations and resolved two of those cases, with the judgement ordering nearly $15.2 million in consumer redress and $80,000 in civil money penalties. Two cases remain in active litigation.
The Data Points
The CFPB said it also:
- Identified several issues that raise the risk of consumer harm during the COVID-19 pandemic through its supervisory Prioritized Assessments
- Published content to help consumers financially navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, including on debt collection, that has been accessed by users approximately 4.3 million times
- Provided consumer debt collection educational materials. In 2020, “Ask CFPB,” an interactive online consumer education tool logged 1.9 million page views and/or downloads in English and 220,000 in Spanish for its debt collection questions
- Released a report highlighting servicemembers’ complaint data from 2019
- Published information about debt collection activity during the pandemic for student loans
- Published results of a quantitative online survey of over 8,000 respondents to test several versions of disclosures to support the understanding of time-barred debt and revival that informed the CFPB’s final rules on debt collection
The report is available here.