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Collections is a regulated activity in both jurisdictions. The obligations sit on the creditor and the agency, and they flow down to every person on your floor. Akontec publishes the approved position on each point; your obligation is to train it, enforce it and evidence it.

United States

Area	The requirement in practice
Collector identification and disclosure	The statutory disclosure is given on first contact and identification on every subsequent call, before any discussion of the balance. Scripted, audited on every call in the first two weeks.
Permitted contact hours	Calls only inside the permitted window in the debtor's local time. Enforced in the dialler by time zone, never by collector judgement.
Contact frequency	Attempt limits per account per period are configured in the dialler. A manual override is a serious breach, not a supervisor's discretion.
Validation and disputes	Where the debtor disputes or requests validation, collection activity stops on that account until the creditor confirms it may resume.
Third-party disclosure	The debt is never discussed with anyone other than the debtor or an authorised representative. Location calls follow the approved script only.
Prohibited conduct	No threat of action the creditor will not take, no misrepresentation of the debt or of the collector's identity, no harassment, no obscene or abusive language.
Electronic contact	Email and text contact only through creditor-owned channels and only where the campaign configuration permits it.
State-level rules	Some states impose licensing, disclosure or hour requirements beyond the federal position. The state matrix is published by Akontec and configured in the dialler.

Licensing sits at organisation level. Depending on which states are in the placement, your entity may need to be registered or bonded before a single call is placed. Akontec publishes the current position for the campaign; obtaining and maintaining the registration is the service provider's obligation and its cost. This is checked at the readiness audit and again at each quarterly review.

United Kingdom

Area	The requirement in practice
Fair treatment of customers	The conduct standard is outcome-based. It is not enough that a call followed the script; the customer must have been treated fairly and must have understood their position.
Vulnerable customers	Collectors are trained to identify indicators of vulnerability — illness, bereavement, mental health, financial distress beyond the debt — and to stop collecting and route the account, not to press on more gently.
Affordability and forbearance	Where a customer cannot pay, the collector establishes what is genuinely affordable and applies the approved forbearance options rather than pushing an arrangement that will fail.
Information and clarity	Balance, creditor, and the consequences of non-payment are stated plainly. Nothing is implied that the creditor will not do.
Complaints	Any expression of dissatisfaction is logged as a complaint and routed to the creditor the same day. Collectors do not resolve complaints on the call.
Insolvency and debt advice	Where a customer is in a formal debt solution or working with a debt advice body, contact stops and the account is routed.
Data protection	Personal data is processed only inside the agreed boundary and only for the collection purpose. Subject access requests route to the creditor within 24 hours.

Why the state matrix matters

The federal position is the floor, not the whole rule

Individual states add licensing requirements on the agency, extra disclosure language, narrower calling windows, and in some cases restrictions on contact method. A call that is lawful for a debtor in one state can be a breach for a debtor in the next.

None of this is left to the collector. The matrix is published by Akontec, configured in the dialler and enforced there. What the collector must know is the disclosure and the prohibited statements; what the system must know is where the debtor is and what that changes.

Evidence you must be able to produce

The full recording of any call, retrievable by account reference within one business day.
The certification record for the collector who made it, current on the date of the call.
The dialler configuration in force that day, including window and frequency settings.

The script version in force, and the approval trail for it.
The audit record for that collector for the surrounding period.
The complaint log, and the routing timestamp for any complaint raised.

Notification. Any suspected serious breach, regulator contact, or court or ombudsman correspondence reaches Akontec in writing within 24 hours of discovery, confirmed or not. Late notification is treated more seriously than the breach itself, because it removes the creditor's ability to respond inside its own regulatory deadlines.

Complaints

Recognise it, log it, route it

Complaint handling is the creditor's, not yours. Your obligation is to recognise one, log it and route it — and to do none of the things a well-meaning collector instinctively does when a customer is unhappy.

Do

Log any expression of dissatisfaction as a complaint, whether or not the customer uses the word.
Apologise for the customer's experience of the call.
Tell the customer the complaint has been passed to the creditor.

Do not

Decide that a grumble is not a complaint.
Accept fault on behalf of the creditor, or comment on whether the debt is owed.
Offer a resolution, a write-off, a hold or a compensation figure.
Hold it back for internal investigation first.

Next step

A single call that breaches the frame can cost you the account.

No amount of collection performance offsets that. If the obligations on this page are new to your organisation, say so during contracting — it is not a disqualifier, but discovering it in month three is.

See the quality framework Apply to deliver