May 26, 2015 - ACA International - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has once again updated its regulatory agenda, including its plans for regulating the debt collection industry. The CFPB's recently released spring 2015 Regulatory Agenda is a voluntary update in conjunction with a broader initiative led by the Office of Management and Budget to publish a Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions across the federal government. Portions of the Unified Agenda will be published in the Federal Register, and the full set of materials is now available online.

In addition to debt collection activities, major initiatives involve mortgages, prepaid financial products, payday and other similar loans, overdraft services, defining auto lending larger participants and arbitration. The agenda categorizes rulemaking actions by stage as pre-rule, proposed rule, final rule, long term actions, or completed actions. The next semi-annual agenda, typically released in the fall, will reflect the results of further prioritization and planning.

April 21, 2015 - Forbes.com - For years, FICO credit scores have played a disproportionate role in our lives. FICO, which is used by 90% of lenders in America, determines whether or not we can be approved for a mortgage, auto loan or credit card. It is also used to determine how much we can borrow, and what interest rate we will have to pay if we are approved.

FICO uses data from credit bureaus to assign borrowers a score between 300 and 850. The best scores are given to people who always pay on time, have limited credit card debt and no negative collections activity, judgments or previous bankruptcy filings. People lose the most points for missing payments, receiving collection items or filing bankruptcy.