For Harvey Moore, the timing to serve his two-year term as president of NARCA-National Creditors Bar Association could not be more paradoxical.
Moore’s first 15 months as president coincides with the last 15 months of President Barack Obama’s term in office, and the last nine months of Moore’s term will also be the first nine months that incoming President-elect Donald Trump will spend in office. To bridge administrations helmed by individuals with such divergent ideologies and visions for America will no doubt make for some interesting tight-rope walking.
“We are all in a watch-and-see mode,” Moore said earlier this week. “It will be interesting to see what happens with Dodd-Frank. For President-elect Trump to get anything done is going to take cooperation from both sides of the aisle. It’s possible that the changes we see will not be as broad as campaign promises.”
After Moore’s term as president began last year, he said he wanted to be known as the “education” president. During the past 12 months, Moore pointed out that NARCA has held 12 webinars, conducted two litigation boot camps, conference attendance was higher at the recently held Fall conference than at the group’s Spring event, and that the association has added 85 new members during his first year as president.
“This shows that as an organization, we are solid and stable,” Moore said.
The plan for the second year in office is to try and increase the number of webinars and boot camps, and to continue to expand the education that NARCA offers into new fields, such as commercial lending, medical, subrogation, and mortgage.
NARCA also plans to continue its outreach and lobbying efforts, not just with regulators like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Congressional committees like the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, but also to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and the Conference of Chief Justices and the National Center for State Courts.
“NARCA’s issues include those facing attorneys practicing law in the courtroom,” Moore said. “We’re really looking at the whole process of lawyers practicing law and protecting creditor’s rights attorneys and getting our issues before the right parties.”
On top of adding more educational opportunities, expanding the education coverage, working with a brand new administration, and lobbying more Congressional committees, there are still other issues that may need to be dealt with, such as potential changes at the CFPB.
“I keep looking back to the president-elect’s vision and one of his pieces is he wants to put a freeze on new regulations,” Moore said. “He wants a financial impact done for any regulations to make sure they are fair, equitable, and do not put Main Street America out of business. I think that when you look at the scope of regulations coming from the CFPB on debt collection, the president elect’s vision may cause the CFPB to focus the regulations a little more, and take into account to a greater degree the financial impact of those regulations.”
