Bigger Is Not Always Better – Largest Collection Agency Pays Largest Penalty Ever

NCO Group, reputedly the largest collection agency in the world, has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $3.2 million according to an announcement today from the Federal Trade Commission.  The government’s press release says it is the largest penalty ever against a third party debt collector

The FTC complaint alleged violations of the FDCPA (Fair Debt Collection Practices Act) when dealing with consumer collection calls.

While the FDCPA does not technically apply to the collection activities at The Kaplan Group since we only do B2B collections, we do not violate the spirit of the law and have never had a complaint filed about our collection activities.  NCO has about 32,000 more employees and $1.2 billion more revenue than The Kaplan Group according to this article on InsideARM.  Bigger is not always Better.

About The Author:

Dean Kaplan is Principal at The Kaplan Group. Dean's exper­tise is widely rec­og­nized in the debt col­lec­tion indus­try. His advice has been pub­lished in a num­ber of indus­try newslet­ters such as Credit Today and InsideARM and he is a fre­quent speaker at indus­try events.