All terms

Placement

Placement — A placement is the assignment of an account or a batch of accounts by a creditor or debt owner to a collections firm or agency for collection, under terms set by a placement agreement, without transferring ownership.

Regulation F uses the concept without defining it: 12 C.F.R. § 1006.30(b) prohibits a debt collector from selling, transferring, or placing for collection a debt it knows or should know has been paid, settled, or discharged in bankruptcy. Beyond that, "placement" is contractual vocabulary rather than a regulatory term, and its content — data fields supplied, media available on request, fee tier, work standards, permitted contact channels, suit authority, and recall rights — lives in the placement agreement and accompanying client work standards. The distinction from a sale matters legally: on placement the bank remains the owner and, under the interagency third-party guidance, remains accountable for the activity performed on its behalf.

See also

• RecallA recall is a creditor's withdrawal of a placed account from the collections firm, ending the firm's authority to work it and triggering return of files, cessation of contact, and reconciliation of any fees earned.
• Account mediaAccount media is the underlying account-level documentation for a debt — the signed agreement, periodic statements, transaction history, and payment records — as distinct from the summary data fields that travel in a placement or sale file.
• TPRMTPRM, or third-party risk management, is the bank discipline of identifying and managing the risks arising from business arrangements with outside parties — including the law firms and agencies to which it places collections work — across the full life cycle of the relationship.
• Contingency feeA contingency fee is a fee payable to the collections firm as an agreed percentage of amounts actually collected, earned only on recovery rather than billed for time.

Where this appears

• How banks audit their collection law firms
• Manual compliance versus enforced compliance
• Migrating a collections firm to a new case management system
• Migrating from Q-Law
• CollectMax alternatives for collections law firms
• Q-LawE alternatives: what to check before you switch
• Collection-Master alternatives: what a replacement has to carry
• Collection-Master vs CollectMax: ownership, architecture and pricing model
• Debt collection software for law firms: how the category works
• How to respond to a debt validation request
• Regulation F's 7-in-7 rule in practice
• Building a validation notice from a placement file
• Call recording and retention for collections firms
• What documents you need to file suit on a credit-card debt
• What a collections firm's audit file should contain
• SCRA and bankruptcy scrubs: what each protects and when the check must run
• The YGC and vExchange file format, explained
• Operational guides for collections law firms
• The Otto platform
• Client oversight — the bank window, which ships as Glass
• One-click audit packages
• Exchange — the placement file gateway
• Editorial policy
• How to model the return on collections software
• Support — a person replies
• What Is Regulation F (12 CFR Part 1006), and What Did It Add to the FDCPA?
• Regulation F Validation Notice (12 CFR 1006.34): Content, Itemization Date, Presumed Receipt
• TCPA Consent and Revocation: What Do 47 U.S.C. 227 and 47 CFR 64.1200 Require for Collection Calls and Texts?
• Metro 2 Furnishing Accuracy Under the FCRA and the e-OSCAR Dispute Cycle
• What Evidence Must a Firm Hold Before Filing Suit on a Consumer Debt?
• GLBA Safeguards Rule: What Are the Required Elements of an Information Security Program Under 16 CFR 314?
• Client Trust Accounting for Collections Firms: What Does Three-Way Reconciliation Actually Require?
• Bank Third-Party Risk Management: What Do the Interagency Expectations Mean for a Law Firm Being Supervised?

Last reviewed 2026-07-29

This is an informational reference, not legal advice, and using it creates no attorney-client relationship. Limitations periods turn on facts this page cannot know — which state's law governs, the contract type, when the claim accrued, and whether anything tolled or revived it. Confirm against the primary source and your own counsel before acting.