All terms

Sampling

Sampling — Sampling is the selection of a subset of accounts, calls, letters, or files for transaction testing, sized and structured to support a conclusion about the compliance of the whole population.

The FDIC's Consumer Compliance Examination Manual, section II-1, states the governing principle: "the number of transactions selected and the type of sampling used should be relative to the perceived risk of consumer harm and the need to assess the level of compliance in an activity or function." It also contemplates that examiners may reduce sample sizes where management performs timely, comprehensive testing of its own — the direct rationale for a firm maintaining an internal QA sample that a bank reviewer can rely on. Statistical sampling permits quantified confidence but is generally outside the manual's scope; judgmental and risk-weighted selection is the norm, which makes the documented basis for how a sample was drawn as important as the results.

See also

• ExaminationAn examination is a supervisory review conducted by a prudential regulator or the CFPB to assess compliance with federal consumer financial law, obtain information about an entity's activities and compliance systems, and detect risks to consumers and markets.
• 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.
• AttestationAn attestation is a formal assertion about the design or operation of controls — either a management certification or an independent practitioner's report such as a SOC report — relied on by a bank in lieu of, or alongside, its own testing of a third party.
• Disposition codeA disposition code is the standardized value a collector or system writes to an account after a contact attempt, recording the outcome — right-party contact, wrong number, no answer, refusal, promise to pay, dispute, attorney representation — and driving the next scheduled action.

Where this appears

• How banks audit their collection law firms
• Migrating a collections firm to a new case management system

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.