Recovery agents calling on credit card customers and loan defaulters will soon have to undergo a mandatory 100-hour training and certificate course.

Recovery agents are appointed by banks or by third parties hired by banks to collect dues from credit card customers or borrowers who fail to make their payments to the banks in a given period of time.

In recent times recovery agents have been found using abusive language, threatening customers with physical harm, harassing the family of customers/borrowers to collect defaulted amounts.

In one such incident a credit card customer committed suicide after persistently harassed by recovery agents in Mumbai.

Alarmed by such incidents the banking regulator Reserve Bank of India [Get Quote], RBI, has announced guidelines that may just put an end to such brute force by recovery agents.

Banks will have to ensure that the recovery agents employed by them or by third parties will have to undergo a 100-hour training and certificate course to be jointly devised by the Indian Institute of Banking and Finance and the Indian Banks' Association.

The course among other things will be aimed at sensitising recovery agents about the rights of the customers/borrowers and teach them fair debt collection practices.

Do you think the 100-hour training and certificate course to be made mandatory by RBI for debt recovery agents sensitise them to the rights of borrowers? Will they stop using intimidating tactics to recover dues from defaulters? Will it lead to better debt collection practices? Tell us.