The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (Bureau or CFPB) and the Federal Trade Commission (Commission or FTC) are pleased to present the 2021 Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) Annual Report. In 1977, Congress passed the FDCPA “to eliminate abusive debt collection practices by debt collectors” while ensuring that “those debt collectors who refrain from using abusive debt collection practices are not competitively disadvantaged.”1 The Bureau engages in a wide range of supervision, enforcement, rulemaking, guidance, consumer
education, and other activities to implement the FDCPA.