Getting to Know Max Hawes of Hawes Group
- Max Hawes started out building operational fixes for creditor rights firms while still in college. Today he oversees a portfolio of companies (Titanium Legal, VoizTrail, and RoboDX) built on a single obsession: turning the industry’s manual processes into scalable technology. He shares the philosophy that keeps him focused on signal over noise, the AI-and-identity book he can’t put down, and the one thing about mealtime he’d reorder if he could.
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- This series is sponsored by TEC Services Group
Labeling Yourself a ‘Debt Collector’ Doesn’t Make What You Are Collecting a Debt, Judge Rules
- A firm chasing unpaid red-light camera fines called itself a “debt collector” in its texts to a consumer. When that consumer sued under the FDCPA, his own best argument was the collector’s self-description. An Illinois judge wasn’t persuaded, granting summary judgment on a single threshold question that had nothing to do with what the defendant called itself. The reasoning, and the judge’s line about what actually governs, could matter for anyone collecting government-imposed obligations.
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Judge Trims, But Doesn’t Fully Dismiss, FCRA Suit Over Retained Dispute Notation
- It’s the classic dispute about a dispute: a consumer disputes an account, later withdraws the dispute, then sues when the notation stays put and allegedly blocks a mortgage. A Michigan federal judge just let part of that claim survive, finding a once-accurate notation can plausibly turn misleading after a consumer walks it back. The willfulness claim didn’t make it, and the reason comes down to how split the courts remain on whether an agency has to remove it at all.
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Mortgage Servicer NewRez to Pay $15.5M in Multi-state Enforcement Action
- Forty-eight state agencies pooled their examination authority and came away with a $15.5 million settlement over force-placed insurance charged to borrowers who already carried valid coverage. NewRez self-identified and remediated before the deal closed, but the agreement still locks in a year of enhanced monitoring with a hard failure-rate trigger and monthly reporting to a three-state committee. How states are coordinating these exams is the part every servicer should be reading closely.
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N.Y. DFS Flags N-central Breach in Unusual Warning
- New York’s financial regulator rarely issues direct threat alerts, so when DFS warned regulated entities about active exploitation of a remote-management platform, the signal itself carried weight. The flaw sits in software many firms never touch directly, which is exactly what makes it dangerous for anyone relying on an outside provider to manage their systems. DFS wants licensees to answer one urgent question fast, and firms that patched late may already be compromised without knowing it.
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Why Trust in AI Agents Starts With the Data Underneath
- Every executive surveyed in a new MIT Technology Review Insights report expects to deploy AI agents within two years. Far fewer trust the agents they already have. The report pins that gap on a single variable, and financial services firms land dead last on it. For collection shops weighing agentic AI in the contact center, the finding is a pointed caution about where a wrong automated action creates FDCPA and FCRA liability rather than efficiency.
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NYT: Credit Counseling Demand Surges, and the Charged-Off Pipeline Grows
- Nonprofit credit counselors are reporting double-digit jumps in demand, and it isn’t discretionary spending sending people through the door. It’s groceries, car repairs, and medical bills. The data also reshapes the placement picture, with younger borrowers now the fastest-growing segment carrying their own mix of unsecured and student debt. But the development that should get every collector’s and debt buyer’s attention is the quiet move by nonprofits into settlement-style services aimed squarely at accounts already charged off or headed there.
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WORTH NOTING: How much the average family is paying today to send a child to college … What happens these days when you try to sell something on Craigslist … Astronomers have discovered a brand new object, a black hole star … A look at some cool photos from yesterday’s solar eclipse … Consulting the Farmers’ Almanac for when it’s going to start feeling like Fall … The 50 most unappreciated TV shows of the 21st century … If anyone wants to pay me $6 million to help influence coverage, I likely won’t say no either … Forget trying for a work-life balance and shoot for this instead.
Top 10 Thursday, part I
Top 10 Thursday, part II
The Daily Digest is sponsored by TCN. Today, contact centers need to do more with less. TCN’s cloud-based predictive dialing tools and services help clients to leverage the most sophisticated inbound, outbound, and blended calling technologies available. TCN’s award-winning platform offers multiple features to assist in compliance while improving performance with no hardware, no monthly minimums, or maintenance fees. Call 866-745-1900 or visit tcn.com today.
