The new law prohibits banks and financial institutions from implementing abusive practices in order to manage debt collection.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
From a statement issued by the Congress of Guatemala:
With 108 votes in favor, Congress deputies approved amendments to the Banking Act, with which it prohibited harassment and abusive collection practices on the part of the lenders.
The first Article amended was 46, which prevents the realization of communications for collection or payment through phone calls, text messages, emails or any other similar means in non-working days or hours, making more than 5 calls per day to collect and charging people other than the debtor or those who acted as guarantors for them.
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Banco Popular y de Desarrollo Comunal tenders collection management services for accounts declared by the institution as written-off operations.
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"The model of this contracting is conceptualized under the consumption scheme according to demand, with which it is intended to have the services of a company that meets the needs that the Bank requires in the collection management service of accounts declared as written-off operations and/or estimated at 100%, it shall locate the debtors, guarantors and/or co-debtors of these operations and recover all or part of the amounts owed by them either through the total cancellation of the customer, refinancing, payment plan and/or payment arrangement in accordance with the policies in force and established for that purpose by the Bank, prior analysis of each case by the company and the definition of the technological tools to be used for negotiation with the customer (understood by tools to: telephone calls, e-mail, sending messaging, SMS, IVR or WhatsApp and all those tools available in the market for negotiation).
In Guatemala, banks will grant deferrals and will wait for loans whose debtors are directly or indirectly affected by the spread of the coronavirus, specifically those that are not more than one month late on February 29.
The Guatemalan Banking Association (ABG) reported on March 21 that these decisions were made with the objective of supporting clients and users of banking services, who will be affected by the spread of covid-19.
The government has announced that it will stop the outsourcing of tax collections and reestablish it as a function of the Directorate General of Revenue.
The Minister of Economy and Finance, Dulcidio De La Guardia, also announced the elimination of the National Tax Authority, created in the previous administration, and the management and collection of taxes will go back into the hands of the General Revenue Department.
A bill proposed to the National Assembly aims to hire more companies to manage cases of tax arrears.
So far only one company is responsible for this service, engaged directly and exclusively to manage collections from legal and natural persons who are behind with tax payments. If the bill presented by the Ministry of Economy and Finance is successful, the government will open up the process for hiring companies.