Legal Daily article: Multi angle efforts to rectify the chaotic framework of financial debt collection. Meanwhile, from a financial perspective
Resolutely fighting the battle to prevent and resolve financial risks is an important task for China at present. The domestic debt collection industry plays an irreplaceable role in preventing and resolving financial risks, and achieving the healthy development of the debt collection industry has become an important lever for resolving the accumulated risk of non-performing assets, improving the financial governance system, and enhancing financial governance capabilities.
However, there are currently many irregularities in the domestic collection industry, which to some extent affect the healthy development and stable prosperity of the financial market.
One is the diversity of violent collection methods. Driven by interests, some debt collectors infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of debtors through soft or direct violent means such as containment, entanglement, harassment, threats, intimidation, and exposure. Some illegally obtain the privacy of debtors themselves and their relatives and friends, crazily harass and intimidate debtors themselves and their relatives and friends, and even threaten to come to collect payments. Some even forge "lawyer letters" and "arrest warrants" to intimidate debtors. Due to weak legal awareness and the disadvantaged position of outstanding debts, borrowers rarely resort to legal means to protect their rights.
Secondly, there is a lack of industry regulation. The lack of industry associations for debt collection has led to limited external supervision, and debt collection agencies can only set their own professional ethics standards for debt collection. Debt collection policies place more emphasis on recovering funds as much as possible, rather than providing fair and ethical treatment to debtors. In order to improve the effectiveness of debt collection, they are willing to play the legal "sideline ball", and various violent and soft violent debt collection behaviors continue to emerge, causing serious negative social impacts and leading to many development difficulties such as disorderly competition and stigmatization in the debt collection industry.
Thirdly, the collection regulations are not fully perfect. The regulation of disorderly collection behavior, the protection of the rights and interests of various subjects, the optimization of the industrial competition order and the improvement of social integrity have all put forward urgent requirements for promoting the special legislation of China's debt collection industry.
In response to the chaos of financial debt collection mentioned above, the author suggests regulating it from the following aspects:
Firstly, strict collection access is required. Strictly enforce the admission threshold for collection agencies, establish a qualification certification system for collection agents, unify the business scope of collection agencies, and clarify the qualification standards for collection personnel without violent crimes, bad credit records, major debts, etc. Strictly punish fraudulent, intimidating, or other unethical collection behaviors, effectively enhance the awareness of legal collection in the industry, and promote the development of the collection industry in a transparent, professional, and legal manner.
Secondly, increase regulatory efforts. Establish a collection industry association to strengthen the statistics and effective supervision of key data such as the number of industry practitioners, the scale of practitioners, industry growth, profit margins, and complaint rates. The financial regulatory authorities will continue to prioritize the rectification of illegal collection and other disorderly phenomena in the financial sector, strengthen industry supervision, and create a favorable financial environment for economic and social development.
Once again, improve the legal framework. The rectification of the chaos in the field of financial debt collection should not only focus on the supervision of collection activities, but also provide a legal framework for collection and consumer rights protection. We should implement the relevant requirements of laws, regulations, and regulatory provisions on the protection of the rights and interests of financial consumers, standardize the regulatory model, practice certification, behavioral rules, industry self-discipline, rights protection mechanisms, and legal responsibilities of the collection industry, clarify the rights and obligations of collection agencies and their collectors, and continuously optimize the financial ecosystem and credit environment.
Finally, smooth channels for relief. Continuously expanding the channels for resolving financial consumer disputes, further improving the mechanism for handling financial consumer complaints, and forming diversified and convenient dispute resolution mechanisms such as self settlement, third-party mediation, arbitration, and litigation. At the same time, public security organs and financial regulatory departments should further share resources, collaborate and strengthen efforts to crack down on illegal collection cases, ensure that the protection of financial consumer rights is implemented, and continuously optimize the financial ecosystem and credit environment.
