Code and bot for the debtor
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The State Duma is preparing for the second reading amendments to the legislation, facilitating the interaction of collectors with debtors. Participants in the recovery market expect that this will help improve the efficiency of pre-trial recovery. But lawyers fear that the proposed changes will untie the hands of collectors and nullify all the achievements in protecting the rights of debtors.
On July 25, the State Duma is planning the second reading of amendments to the laws regulating the collection of overdue debts (“On the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of individuals in the implementation of activities to return overdue debts” and “On microfinance activities …”).
The main changes concern the process of communication with debtors. In particular, the concept of “realized direct interaction” is introduced.
It can take place with the help of meetings, a telephone or a robot and is considered to have taken place only if it was possible to convey to the debtor all the information specified by law. It is also defined that several interconnected messages received by the debtor are a single message, and the exchange of messages with the debtor during the day is considered one interaction.
It is proposed to provide all participants in the collection market – collection agencies, collection services of banks and MFIs – with the opportunity to send written correspondence (in particular, independently or through a courier), and not just postal items, to use the single portal “Gosuslugi” upon receipt of the appropriate consent from the debtor in his personal account. Collection officers will have the right to use the code, not the last name, when interacting with the debtor.
Debtors will be able to switch to a human operator if the debtor interacts with them using an “automated intelligent agent”. In addition, they must be notified when “another person” is brought to collect.
In 2022, the FSSP received 57.9 thousand appeals against the actions of professional collectors, but only 9% of them were found to be justified. For the five months of 2023, the department received 26.6 thousand complaints with the same degree of validity of claims. Of the total number of appeals to the Central Bank, 20% are recognized as justified.
Market participants have repeatedly emphasized the inaccuracy of the wording of the current law (in particular, see “Kommersant” dated June 29), but creditors themselves are reluctant to publicly comment on the bill. The banks declined to comment.
Collection agencies and MFO collection services “have to make significant efforts to work without compromising efficiency, and at the same time comply with the law, even in terms of remote interaction with debtors,” says Roman Makarov, CEO of MFC Zaimer. Since the sphere of collection is quite conflicting, emotionally saturated, the legislation governing it “should include clear algorithms for the main actions of debt collection specialists,” he explains.
“The more specific the law is formulated, the better. This eliminates ambiguous interpretations, contradictions, and ultimately facilitates interaction between the company and the client,” emphasizes Andrey Ponomarev, CEO of the Webbankir online financial platform.
It is necessary to protect recovery specialists by allowing them not to give their real names, Mr. Makarov believes.
At the same time, Mikhail Alekseev, an expert of the People’s Front project For the Rights of Borrowers, clarifies, it is important that “there are no excesses in favor of the debtor or creditor.” It is precisely such excesses that lawyers see in the changes.
The amendments by the collectors “in many respects nullify all efforts aimed at protecting the interests of borrowers from abuse by collectors,” Yury Fedyukin, managing partner of Enterprise Legal Solutions, is sure: “The purpose of all messages sent by the collector to the debtor is to repay the debt, so they are all interconnected by default. Making such a change in the law will allow ignoring the established limits on the number of contacts with the debtor. Adding the ability to send written correspondence means giving collectors the opportunity to “spam” the debtor – here the costs are significantly lower than postage, and their delivery is not recorded in any way. The introduction of the concept of direct contact that took place is a return to the practice of auto-dialing and bombarding the debtor with messages.
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