FTC Head to Address ARM Industry, Take Questions

Attendees to the ACA International’s 71st annual convention and exposition in July will have a chance to ask Julie Brill, sworn in head of the Federal Trade Commission in April, to discuss some of their most pressing concerns.

Brill will take some questions following her address at the conference at Gaylord National on the Potomac in Washington, D.C. from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. on July 12.

Before becoming commissioner, Brill was the senior deputy attorney general and chief of consumer protection and antitrust for the North Carolina Department of Justice, a position she held since February 2009.

Brill is anticipated to discuss a number of topics of interest for the credit and collection industry, including the 2010 FTC Report to Congress on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA); the FTC’s recommendations for amending the FDCPA; the litigation and arbitration roundtables hosted by the FTC during the past year; and recent FTC enforcement actions.

Any of those topics she doesn’t address is likely to be brought up during the question and answer session following the address. Other issues that ACA members are likely to bring up if Brill doesn’t address them during her presentation are the FTC’s changing role under financial reform legislation – if House and Senate conferees have completed their work on a consolidated proposal and findings of the FTC’s study on debt repurchasing and the FTC’s goals for debt repurchasing.

“It’s always wise to ask the FTC what we can do proactively for the industry to be seen in a positive light,” added Adam Peterman, ACA director of government affairs. He added that the FTC and ACA International have a good working relationship, for which he credited the efforts of ACA CEO Rozanne Anderson and other ACA officials.

The convention itself runs from July 11 through July 14.