Happy National Consumer Protection Week!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and I’m not talking about Fat Tuesday…or National Pancake Day…or the weather across the mid-Atlantic. I’m talking about something even better: National Consumer Protection Week.

Excited yet?

This year, National Consumer Protection Week couldn’t come at a better time. While the Federal Trade Commission is promoting a week of consumer awareness, it’s also taking action in some high-profile debt collection cases. This week, the FTC filed a lawsuit against Federal Check Processing Inc. and its affiliates and owners, claiming that the use of “Federal” in the company name mislead consumers into thinking the company has the power to arrest them, which is obviously not the case.

Also, the FTC announced in February that it had started distributing more than $350 thousand in damages to consumers who were deceived into paying unnecessary “convenience fees” to Jacob Law Group, PLLC, on behalf of debt buyer Security Credit Services, LLC.

But the FTC isn’t the only federal agency increasing its scrutiny of the debt collection industry. Collection agencies of all sizes must brace for eventual scrutiny from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Now is the time for large market debt collectors to prepare for a potential audit by the CFPB. The Bureau has amped up enforcement for large creditors and debt buyers, and its current targets are the collectors themselves. But smaller market participants aren’t off the hook just yet. As the CFPB doles out enforcement actions for larger collection agencies, it will expect smaller agencies to adapt and comply with the new standards.

That’s why we’ve compiled the top questions and expert insight from our insideCompliance webinar into a new, user-friendly report: To the Point: CFPB Audits. Learn how the CFPB measures accountability, so you can do the same. This is a resource no collection agency should be without.

According to the Federal Reserve, the total amount of consumer debt in the United States is now more than $11.5 trillion. And in 2010 alone, collection agencies recovered $55 billion on behalf of their clients.