Creditors and debt settlement advisors often operate in separate areas, waiting to see what the other will do. However, today's slow-burn economy is forcing a change in how these groups interact. When a consumer enrolls in a settlement program, they have made a structural choice. They are no longer just an individual managing credit; they are now part of a coordinated plan.
On June 2, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed SB 254 into law as Act 751, prohibiting retail businesses from imposing surcharges on customers who pay with a debit card. The law defines a surcharge as any additional amount imposed at the time of a transaction that increases the charge to a cardholder for the privilege of using a debit card, and prohibits retail businesses from imposing such charges when a customer chooses to pay by debit card rather than cash, check, credit card, or other similar means of payment.
A Pennsylvania community bank recently disclosed a data exposure incident after an employee entered nonpublic customer information into an unauthorized generative artificial intelligence (AI) application. The information included highly sensitive personal data, such as customer names, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth. According to reports, the bank was able to contact the application vendor and successfully remove the information before it was incorporated into the vendor’s AI training models.
Three leading financial services trade associations (the National Association of Industrial Bankers (NAIB), the Online Lenders Alliance (OLA), and the American Financial Services Association (AFSA)) have just filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in the District of Oregon challenging a recently enacted Oregon law effective June 5, 2026, that seeks to impose Oregon’s 36% interest-rate cap on consumer finance loans made by out-of-state state-chartered banks in their home states to Oregon residents.
In the financial world today, the idea of fairness is a major topic. For collections leaders, this focus is moving toward the resolution phase. As many consumers choose to work with debt settlement companies (DSCs), a new standard has emerged: these accounts must receive the same level of service and opportunity as those who talk directly to the lender.
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