At NARCA’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., last week, the two-year term of president Joann Needleman came to an end and the two-year term of Harvey Moore kicked off. Both spoke with AccountsRecovery.net about their tenures.
For Needleman, her time as president will be remembered as ushering in what is known as NARCA 2.0, a re-branding of the association that has seen it expand its mission to represent collection attorneys in any area of the industry, including consumer and commercial collections. As well, it included working with regulators like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on its proposed rule governing debt collections.
“It’s bittersweet,” Needleman said after the conference. “I was vey happy to be involved in the process of re-branding NARCA and I was happy we were able to help build an enhanced relationship with the CFPB.”
NARCA’s re-branding includes a new tagline, the National Creditor’s Bar Association, a new website, and more.
For Moore, he wants to be known as the “education” president. That means expanding the content areas to which NARCA covers, including subrogation, medical debt, bankruptcy, and commercial collecting. Moore also wants to help take the younger members of NARCA and “make them better attorneys.”
To help accomplish that, NARCA is planning a number of regional bootcamp events across the country next year. But to educate attorneys, Moore admits that he will need some help from clients.
“We’re looking for uniformity in our training modules,” Moore said. “Clients are requiring more and more regulatory training. We’re looking for consistency. We want NARCA to be the source of that training.”
There are other ways that NARCA members can rely on their clients for help as well, Moore said.
Clients have vetted their third-party service providers, especially in the area of data security. It’s more efficient for firms to rely on those assessments rather than each rely on their own process to identify vendors.
“We want to become the educator of choice for the industry,” Moore said.