The national standard for regulating violent collection is coming, and the first guide: it should not be collected after 10 o'clock in the evening

Southern Metropolis Daily

2024-05-15 22:14Published on the official account of Guangdong Southern Metropolis Daily

On May 15, the reporter learned that the Internet Finance Association of China officially issued the "Guidelines for Internet Finance Post-loan Collection Business" (hereinafter referred to as the "Guidelines"), which was developed according to the main content of the national standard of "Guidelines for Post-loan Collection and Risk Control of Internet Finance Personal Online Consumer Credit", and was reviewed and approved by the second meeting of the second council of the Association on April 17, and reported to the financial management department. In addition, the national standards have also been reviewed by the National Financial Standardization Technical Committee.

The Guidelines put forward specific requirements for system management, organization and personnel management, collection objects, access to contact information, collection time, collection operation tools, collection code of conduct, collection records, information disclosure, application of artificial intelligence technology, informative collection, interactive collection and other aspects, and the financial black and gray industry issues related to "anti-collection" are also included in the scope of the regulation.

In recent years, the collection chaos has been repeatedly prohibited, and the relevant state departments have also taken action to rectify and standardize it many times. Nandu reporters found through the search of the black cat complaint platform that there are currently as many as 470,000 related complaints about "violent collection", and the complaints mainly focus on "personality insults and intimidation of myself", "threats to family, friends, bosses and colleagues", "exposure of address books, disclosure of personal privacy", "text messages, telephone harassment bombardment", etc., consumers have been suffering from violent collection for a long time.

The national standard for regulating violent collection is coming, and the first guide: it should not be collected after 10 o'clock in the evening

National standards for collection will be issued

Nandu reporter learned that the Internet Finance Association of China officially issued the "Internet Finance Post-loan Collection Business Guidelines".

According to reports, in order to further standardize the post-loan collection business of Internet finance, protect the legitimate rights and interests of creditors, debtors and related parties, and promote the healthy and orderly development of consumer finance business, the Internet Finance Association of China, together with the China Banking Association, the China Communications Enterprise Association, and the Internet Society of China, organized relevant practitioners to jointly develop the national standard of "Guidelines for Post-loan Collection and Risk Control of Internet Finance Personal Online Consumer Credit". At present, the standard has been reviewed by the National Financial Standardization Technical Committee.

The Internet Finance Association of China further introduced, "At present, the collection business needs to be standardized, considering that it will take some time for the standard to be released, the association has developed the "Internet Finance Post-loan Collection Business Guidelines" with the main content of the national standard, which has been reviewed and approved by the second meeting of the second council of the association on April 17, and reported to the financial management department, which is now released. Subsequently, after the national standard is issued and implemented, this guideline will be replaced. ”

From the perspective of the scope of application, the Guidelines are applicable to commercial banks, consumer finance companies, microfinance companies, auto finance companies and other institutions engaged in lending business (hereinafter collectively referred to as "financial institutions") to carry out post-loan collection business of personal online consumer credit by themselves or entrust third-party collection agencies to carry out personal online consumer credit post-loan collection business; After the financial institution transfers the creditor's rights in accordance with the regulations, the transferee of the creditor's rights such as the financial asset management company, the local asset management company, the financial asset investment company, and the financing guarantee company shall carry out the collection business on its own or entrust a third-party collection agency; It is also applicable to financial institutions to carry out post-loan collection business of individual industrial and commercial households and personal non-online consumer credit (including credit card products) by themselves or entrust third-party collection agencies.

The "Guidelines" mainly put forward specific requirements for system management, organization and personnel management, collection objects, contact information acquisition, collection time, collection operation tools, collection code of conduct, collection records, information disclosure, artificial intelligence technology application, informative collection, interactive collection and other aspects. Among them, as far as the collection targets are concerned, the Guidelines clearly mention that "financial institutions and third-party collection agencies should only collect from debtors, and should not collect from contact persons." ”

In terms of the code of conduct for collection, the Guidelines emphasize that "the collector shall truthfully inform the debtor of the reason for collection, the amount of overdue arrears, and the consequences of default." The collector should make an objective statement, should not use ambiguous or misleading expressions, should not exaggerate facts (such as exaggerating the amount of debt, liability for breach of contract, legal consequences, etc.), and should not fabricate non-existent facts (such as fictitious bad credit records or blacklists, etc.). It is worth mentioning that the Guidelines also state that the management of collectors should be strengthened, including "establishing a mechanism for dynamic monitoring of the entire process of collectors' professional behavior".

In the case of informative and interactive collection, the Guidelines clearly regulate the collection of telephone and text messages. Specifically, the frequency of collection in the form of voice (including intelligent voice) should be strictly controlled within a reasonable and necessary range, and the frequency of calls made by the same financial institution and its cooperative third-party collection agency to a single debtor should not exceed 3 times per day, unless otherwise agreed with the debtor. "Collection operations carried out by sending text messages, voices, 5G messages, etc., shall comply with the relevant regulations of the telecommunications industry." ”

In terms of collection time, the Guidelines mention that collection operations carried out by sending text messages, voices, 5G messages, etc., should comply with the relevant regulations of the telecommunications industry. If both parties have agreed on the collection time in advance, the collection operation shall be subject to their agreement. If the two parties have not agreed on the collection time, the collection operation should not be collected from 22:00 to 8:00 the next day.

At the same time, the Guidelines also emphasize the issues related to personal information protection, "Financial institutions and third-party collection agencies shall perform the main responsibility of personal information protection, and shall strictly abide by relevant national laws, regulations, rules and normative documents when collecting, using, processing, providing, transmitting and storing the debtor's relevant personal information, and formulate relevant standards, policies and procedures for personal information security." ”

In addition, the "anti-collection" related financial black and gray industry issues have also been mentioned, and the "Guidelines" stated that in order to promote the standardized and healthy development of the collection business, "relevant industry self-regulatory organizations should organize the industry to jointly respond to the harm caused by the anti-collection alliance, professional anti-collection and other black and gray industries, conduct in-depth investigation and research, analyze the causes of the anti-collection alliance and professional anti-collection and other black and gray industries, formulate solutions and measures and promote the implementation of the industry, and form policy recommendations when necessary to report to relevant national departments such as financial management, industry and information technology, public security, justice, and network information." ”

Complaints related to collection are frequent

At this year's CCTV "3.15" party, Tongcheng Financial APP gift cards were exposed to routines, and a series of issues related to violent collection and disguised high interest rates were involved behind it, causing strong dissatisfaction among consumers. In the "315 revelations" received by many media, complaints related to violent collection have also appeared frequently, and financial consumers have been suffering from violent collection for a long time.

Nandu reporters found through the black cat complaint platform that at present, there are more than 470,000 related complaints about "violent collection", and the complaints mainly focus on "personality insults and intimidation of oneself", "threats to family, friends, bosses and colleagues", "exposure of address books, leakage of personal privacy", "text messages, telephone harassment bombardment" and so on.

Nandu reporters also learned that previously, a number of financial institutions had been fined and ordered to rectify for improper collection. According to public information, at the end of last year, Ningyin Consumer Gold was fined 200,000 yuan by the Ningbo Branch of the Central Bank for providing bad personal information without informing the information subject in advance; Changyin Consumer Gold was ordered to make corrections and fined 350,000 yuan by the Shaanxi Supervision Bureau of the State Financial Supervision and Administration for imperfect collection management of cooperative institutions......

It is worth mentioning that in addition to violent collection, the problem of financial black and gray industry under the banner of "anti-collection" has also emerged in an endless stream. It is reported that at the beginning of this year, the Nanhu police in Jiaxing successfully cracked a case of forged documents, and the criminal gang involved in the case carried out "anti-collection" services under the guise of debt optimization and debt planning, and seized more than 300 documents stamped with forged seals. In addition, Haier Consumer Finance also cooperated with Du Xiaoman and Meituan to assist the police in cracking a large-scale "anti-collection" financial fraud case.

The relevant departments have intervened many times

The chaos related to collection has been repeatedly prohibited, and the relevant state departments attach great importance to the protection of the rights and interests of financial consumers, and have repeatedly taken action to rectify and standardize. As early as 2018, the Internet Finance Association of China launched the Self-Discipline Convention on the Collection of Overdue Debts in Internet Finance (Trial), which made specific provisions in terms of punishment for untrustworthiness, business management, personnel management, information management, outsourcing management, complaint handling, etc., clarified the positive and negative lists of debt collection behaviors, and set up enforcement and punishment mechanisms.

In recent years, the regulation of collection has been increasing. In May last year, the Internet Finance Association of China organized the development of the "Internet Finance Personal Online Consumer Credit Post-loan Collection Risk Control Guidelines" officially solicited the opinions of practitioners, and the draft pointed out that the collection work specifications include six aspects: system management, personnel management, business management, outsourcing management, personal information security, and complaint handling.

Then, in October, the Qingdao Supervision Bureau of the State Administration of Financial Supervision and Administration issued the first domestic online loan collection guidance "Guiding Opinions on Regulating the Collection of Internet Loans and Credit Cards", which made detailed provisions on establishing and improving the collection management mechanism, focusing on strengthening the management of outsourced collection, strictly implementing the collection code of conduct, properly handling collection reports and complaints, and cooperating with the crackdown on the "anti-collection" black industry.

In December of the same year, the State Administration of Financial Supervision and Administration revised the Administrative Measures for Consumer Financial Companies (Draft for Comments), and officially issued the Administrative Measures for Consumer Financial Companies in March this year, which came into force on April 18, highlighting the strengthening of the protection of the rights and interests of financial consumers, stating that "the prohibitive provisions of cooperative institutions should be clarified to avoid infringement of the legitimate rights and interests of consumers due to non-standard collection by cooperative institutions, especially collection agencies; Consumer finance companies are required to implement the main responsibility for collection management, formulate performance appraisal and reward and punishment mechanisms for collection agencies, and carry out entrusted collection activities in accordance with laws and regulations, so as to effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of financial consumers. ”

Written by: Nandu reporter Ma Ningning and intern Zhu Kexuan from Shanghai

View original image 30K