DALLAS — Nonprime lender Veros Credit LLC has made changes to its call-monitoring system following adjustments to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in March.
“We’ve added some more pieces to it,” Mark Medrano, Veros’s director of compliance and training development, said at the Auto Finance Performance and Compliance Summit earlier this month. It seems like longer introductory disclosures are required on every incoming call, but “we try to make it as easy as possible,” he added.
Earlier this year, a federal appeals court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015
definition of an autodialer was insufficient.
“It was a very good ruling for the industry, but it left some question marks because the court didn’t entirely interpret those matters,” said Robert Tennant, Veros’s chief legal officer. “They just said that the FCC’s interpretation wasn’t sufficient in those areas.”
While lenders wait for the FCC to provide a more concrete definition, they still need to comply with the TCPA because it can be “very expensive not to,”Tennant added.
Additionally, Veros increased its customer service staff and extended the training period for collectors.
“It went from three days to over a week,” Medrano said. “That’s a big difference in how much longer they are off the phones, and that’s quantifiable.”
