Would Process Serving Standards Help Debt Collection Compliance?

Joel Rosenthal,
JJL Process Corp.

In June I had the privilege to attend two days of very constructive CFPB and FTC meetings in Washington regarding the collection industry – hats off to both government organizations for a job well done. There were a limited number of vendors present, all of whom in my opinion are at the cutting edge of compliance in their particular category of business. To the best of my knowledge, JJL Process was the only process server in attendance. In speaking with several of the other vendors, a clear trend emerged that I think is of significant interest.

Based on collection industry media articles and industry conference sessions, this year would seem to be dominated by an enormous focus on increased compliance as a result of the great new unknown – the CFPB. Despite this apparent trend, all of the vendors that I spoke to were surprised, and maybe a bit frustrated, at the relatively slow pace of progression to the new more-compliant technologies. But at this point there appears to be a lot more window-shopping than actual purchases. The other thought that some of the vendors discussed was that if the CFPB takes one action or makes one comment that relates to their specific vendor category there would be a rush to the new more compliant technology.

Switching gears, process serving has been in the news quite a bit the last few months. Here are some examples:

• California Attorney General sues JP Morgan Chase for alleged flaws in their credit card litigation, specifically robo-signing of bank affidavits and process serving “sewer service.”

• ASTA Funding and Pressler and Pressler are defendants in a pending class action suit in New York with one of the allegations being “sewer service.”

• The New York Times had as its lead front page business section article a piece on the collection industry. In the article, the reporter writes “sometimes borrowers do not even realize they have been sued…the situation arises when lenders claim to serve borrowers with notice of a lawsuit, as they are required to do under the law, but do not actually do so.”

For those of you who want to raise the bar, there are process serving standards already in existence. To view the standards: http://processservingstandards.com/Process_Serving_Standard.html