As we approach the fifth year anniversary of the proposed rulemaking on debt collection, and the regulatory process appears to be moving forward, the 74 undersigned consumer, community, civil rights, faith, labor and legal services groups write to urge the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“Consumer Bureau”) to focus on protecting consumers from abusive debt collection practices in any rule that it issues. Many of our groups have submitted previous comments regarding debt collection, including responses to the November 2013 Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and more recently to the Request for Information on the Consumer Bureau’s Adopted Regulations in June 2018. We reiterate our concerns about widespread debt collection abuses that we have raised in the past and the ongoing need for better
protection against these abuses.