Analytics

The best consumer confidence reading since September 2008's financial meltdown and bullish earnings reported this week by a range of leading companies - including UPS and Whirlpool - show rising demand and an economic rebound is gathering steam.

Small-business owners’ confidence rose in April, and a growing number are reporting improving business conditions, according to new data Discover Financial Services released this week.

The Loan Modification Scam Prevention Network has launched a national campaign to prevent loan modification scams through public education, complaint reporting and coordination with local, state and federal enforcement agencies. The group is led by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and NeighborWorks America.

The United States Supreme Court announced a decision Wednesday in a case that limits the scope of a defense provided to debt collectors who violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) so as to exempt a legal error made in good faith, see story.

Citing the continued effects of the economic downturn, Wells Fargo & Co. today reported a higher credit card charge-off rate on a slightly smaller pool of credit card receivables for the first quarter ended March 31 compared with the same period last year.

Experian, a global information services company, today announced that the national average commercial risk score is up 2.4% and overall delinquencies have declined since the beginning of the year.

Certegy Check Services reached an agreement with the Florida Attorney General's office this week to pay an estimated $1 million to settle charges related to a high-profile security breach in 2007.

Despite grim predictions that the credit crunch would choke off the economy’s biggest engine - consumption - people have indeed been spending again.

The three major credit bureaus are widening the types of personal data they provide banks, an effort to strengthen financial firms' ability to properly assess loan candidates.

The U.S. House of Representatives this morning passed H.R. 3506 by voice vote, a move ACA International has supported to eliminate unnecessary paperwork requirements under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA).

Consumers' confidence in the economy fell in March after two consecutive months of gains, according to data from Discover Financial Services.

Total credit lines among the top five U.S. credit card issuers soared 56.5% to a peak of $3.74 trillion in 2007 from an aggregate $2.39 trillion in 2005 following the rise of home prices during the first half of the decade. But as the bubble burst in 2007 and housing values began to decline, followed by two years of recession, credit card customers defaulted on their accounts en masse, PaymentsSource data show.

With state attorneys general pursuing a growing number of cases against debt collectors and creditors, many collection industry insiders wonder whether they’ll ever get a fair shake.

Limits on issuers’ ability to manage risk represent the most substantial impact from a recent credit card regulation affecting United Kingdom card issuers and cardholders, Auriemma Consulting Group UK Ltd. concludes in a recent report.

In its annual report to Congress on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), released last week (see story), the Federal Trade Commission's methodology for analysis paints an incomplete and inaccurate portrayal of consumer complaints against the third-party collection industry.

The Federal Trade Commission announced Friday that it has issued its annual report on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to Congress.

Wall Street is hungry for risk management expertise and appears to be opening up the checkbook with recruiters to get it.

Most Americans do not realize just how close the U.S. banking system came to collapsing in the fourth quarter of 2008, Kevin Blakely, chief risk officer at Huntington Bancshares Incorporated, said Monday during a speech at the National Collections & Credit Risk Conference in Miami.

The four organizations representing the nation’s accounts receivables management industry are calling on Congress to keep the Federal Trade Commission as the exclusive regulator of debt purchasers and collectors. The unprecedented action by the trade groups to come together is a response to proposed legislation that would strip the FTC of its powers and place the industry under a new authority.

TransUnion reported that during the fourth quarter of 2009 its Credit Risk Index (CRI) indicated that risk conditions in the U.S. are beginning to moderate. The CRI is a statistic developed to measure the changes in average consumer credit risk within various geographies across the nation.