There is a lot of red and green on WebRecon’s monthly table of lawsuits and complaints, which is great for December and Christmas, but not great at trying to figure out which directions the trends are heading.
While all three categories of lawsuits — Fair Credit Reporting Act, Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and Telephone Consumer Protection Act — were up on a month-over-month basis from September to October, FDCPA and FCRA were down from October to November. And FDCPA and TCPA were down comparing October 2019 to the same month a year earlier. Similarly, FDCPA and TCPA remain down on a year-to-date basis comparing the first 11 months of 2018 and 2019.
It can be difficult to discern any specific trends from the monthly statistics published by WebRecon, but there are some data points that should be positives for the credit and collection industry. The number of complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is down more than 10% through the first 11 months of 2019, compared with the same period last year. That is a significant reduction and a sign that the industry is doing a better job of communicating with consumers.
For the FDCPA, the number of suits peaked in 2015 and has declined every year since, and it looks like 2019 will keep that trend going. TCPA complaints peaked in 2016 and have declined every year since, another trend that looks safe in 2019. And, unless there is a huge uptick in the number of complaints filed with the CFPB, 2019 will mark the largest year-over-year decline (and just second annual decline overall) since WebRecon started tracking the data in 2014.
As well, that the number of suits alleging violations of the FDCPA (9.0%) and TCPA (15.3%) are down by such significant figures is also a good sign. All of this may be reversed once the CFPB enacts its proposed debt collection rule — experts expect an influx of new legal theories and lawsuits testing the industry’s compliance with the new rules once they go into effect — but, for now, the data shows that the future might not be as litigious as the past has been.
