A Georgia House committee this week tweaked the "Small Business Borrower Protection Act," a bill containing restrictions for debt buyers that was passed in February by the Georgia Senate.
The House’s Banks & Banking Committee then approved the bill and sent it to the full House, which still needs to consider the measure.
The bill’s original language would force debt buyers to reveal how much they paid for some accounts and would have restricted the possible collections for a guaranteed account purchased by a debt buyer to the amount paid for the account.
But the committee changed some of the language in the definitions section of the bill, and those changes may exempt debt buyers.
In the original version, “successor creditors” was defined as “any person [company or corporate entity] who did not enter into the original debt obligation with the debtor and has by assignment, sale, transfer, or other means acquired the original debt obligation."
Here's the new version:
‘Successor creditor’ means any person, other than an institution whose deposits are federally insured or its affiliates, who did not enter into the original debt obligation with the debtor and has by assignment, sale, transfer, or other means acquired the original debt obligation directly from a federal bank regulatory agency.
The bill, also known as Senate Bill 448, was introduced “to provide for recovery limits for debt obligations by successor creditors; to provide for applicability; to require successor creditors to submit the amount paid for a debt during recovery proceedings; to provide for related matters; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.”
