ACA’s Corporate Counsel Colin Winkler recently talked with ACA member Lauren Valenzuela to get her insights on how her company, Performant Recovery Inc., is tackling compliance planning with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s final debt collection rule. Following is an excerpt from their interview. Editor’s note: This article is available for members only.
12/4/2020 9:00
There’s a lot to unpack in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s 653-page final debt collection rule, but don’t fret—simply step back and start by developing a plan that leverages your company’s existing resources and meets your priorities for consumers and clients.
Lauren Valenzuela, corporate counsel at Performant Recovery Inc., has helpful ideas on how her company will accomplish this goal that she discussed in a recent interview with ACA International’s Corporate Counsel Colin Winkler.
Q: What are the first steps to operationalize now that you’ve see the rule?
A. First things first, at least from my perspective, it is important to communicate with your organization that the new rule has come out. It is okay that you don’t have all the answers yet. You need to start the communication and get people aware that it is here, starting at the very top with your executives, down to middle management and even the front-line staff. From a change-management perspective, it is important to let your organization know that it is finally here. At the end of the day, compliance is everybody’s job, so making those stakeholders aware that the rule is here and getting them ready to dive in with you is important because you’re probably going to have to assemble a cross-functional team once you really get into planning how you’re going to implement compliance with the new rule.
Q. How should you distribute those responsibilities across your organization?
A. I can tell you what we’re doing at our organization. Compliance and legal are taking the lead by creating an inventory of what we think are going to require changes. We are going to approach implementation of the new rules using project management principles. We will identify all the stakeholders within the organization to start building a cross-functional team. With the feedback and expertise from multiple areas, that team will help compliance make sure we identify all the tasks and impacts of operationalizing the new rules. The team will include someone from IT, client services, collections, and training. All these disciplines need to be brought together to make sure we are implementing this rule thoughtfully and doing it in the way that best fits our organization. When you are planning, I encourage everybody to also think about the different audiences that are going to be looking to you as you operationalize this rule. You have multiple audiences—collectors, management, your leadership team, vendors, and your clients. This is a pretty big change not only for us—it does have some impacts on our clients and vendors.
Q. What is your timeline for your project management plan to operationalize the new rule?
A. We know that the rule is not final until one year from publication in the Federal Register, Nov. 30, 2021. We want to be very methodical about any changes and we are not making any changes immediately. What we are going to do is inventory all the changes we think the rule is going to require for our organization and then we’re going to essentially prioritize how we’re going to implement those changes. For example, we may have some things in place already that will meet the requirements and we may have some things in place which are easily adaptable. We may also identify changes that will take longer to implement or that have impacts that we are not ready for yet. We may plan to go live with those changes when it gets closer to the rule’s effective date. Essentially, we are going to categorize and prioritize the changes so we adopt them in phases leading up to the rule’s effective date. This will make it easier for the organization to adapt to all the changes. We don’t want to cause organizational and compliance fatigue with too many changes at once.
Winkler and Valenzuela also discussed areas of the rule her company is prioritizing first, such as call frequency limits and email. To access the complete interview, listen to ACA Cast, available here.
And if you missed any of the webinars as part of ACA’s CFPB Rule, recordings and slide presentations are available here.