WebRecon’s monthly report numbers are all in the red for the first five months of 2019, and that should be welcome news to companies in the credit and collection industry.
The number of lawsuits alleging violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act are all down on a year-over-year basis for the first five months of 2019, as are the number of complaints filed against companies with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The 7,222 allegations made against companies in the credit and collection industry is 5% lower than the 7,612 made during the same period last year. The number of TCPA suits is down 11% on a year-over-year basis, making it the statute with the largest drop in the number of lawsuits between last year and this year, according to WebRecon’s database.
The number of complaints filed with the CFPB is down 20% on a year-over-year basis, another good indicator for the accounts receivable management industry.
Another interesting decline that could be good news for the ARM industry is a drop in the number of class-action lawsuits. About 26% of TCPA lawsuits filed in May were class-action suits, down from 34% in April, and 4% of FCRA suits were class actions, down from 9% a month earlier.
One other notable fact pointed out by WebRecon’s Jack Gordon in his monthly newsletter was the return of Sergei Lemberg to the list of most active attorneys representing individuals who filed suits against companies in the industry.