Debt collection agencies in Illinois

Yes, unless the business is exempt. The Collection Agency Act, 205 ILCS 740, Section 4, says that "No collection agency shall operate in this State, directly or indirectly engage in the business of collecting debt, solicit debt claims for others, have a sales office, a client, or solicit a client in this State, exercise the right to collect, or receive payment for another of any debt, without obtaining a license under this Act." The license is issued by the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. The same section exempts an out-of-state agency whose Illinois activity is limited to collecting from Illinois debtors by interstate communication, such as telephone, mail or email from its own offices, provided it is licensed in its home state and that state grants the same privilege to Illinois-licensed agencies, and Section 2.03 lists nineteen kinds of business the Act does not apply to at all, including banks, credit unions, licensed attorneys, insurance companies, and lenders and retail sellers collecting their own accounts.

Two official routes. The Department of Financial and Professional Regulation publishes its complete license records as open data on the state's portal, data.illinois.gov, where the Professional Licensing dataset can be filtered to collection agencies and searched by name, with each license's status, original issue date and expiration date, ended licenses included. The Department also runs a license lookup for checking one company at a time. Illinois collection agency license numbers are nine digits beginning 017. Only a license recorded as active or on probation, with an unexpired term, is in force.

The register keeps ended licenses on the record with their statuses, so a search often returns several rows for one company: its current license beside older ones marked not renewed, canceled or closed. This site treats a license as in force only when the register records it as active or on probation and its term has not expired. Other words, including inactive and suspended, are not in force. Where the Department has taken disciplinary action against a licensee, the register records that too; this site publishes such an action only as an enforcement record quoted from the regulator’s own document, never inferred from a status word.

Because the state has licensed collection agencies since the mid-1970s and the published records keep the old licenses beside the current ones. The oldest licenses on the register were issued in 1975, and the bands on this page measure how long each agency has been continuously licensed on it. That gives Illinois a real spread across all four bands from the first day, unlike California, where the state license only dates from 2022.

For a lawsuit it depends on the kind of debt. Code of Civil Procedure Section 13-206 gives ten years for "actions on bonds, promissory notes, bills of exchange, written leases, written contracts, or other evidences of indebtedness in writing", and Section 13-205 gives five years for "actions on unwritten contracts, expressed or implied" and "all civil actions not otherwise provided for". Under Section 13-206 a payment or new promise to pay made in writing restarts the ten years. Which period applies to a particular account, and when it started, are questions for a lawyer. The full rules are quoted on the Illinois debt law page.

An agency collecting for others does. Section 8 of the Act requires a collection agency "to file and maintain in force a surety bond, issued by an insurance company authorized to transact fidelity and surety business in the State of Illinois", in the sum of $25,000, for the benefit of creditors who obtain a judgment over money collected and not remitted, and if the bond is terminated and no new bond is filed, the license is canceled on the bond’s termination date. A debt buyer is licensed under the same Act, but Section 8.6 says that in collecting accounts it owns it "shall not be required to (i) file and maintain in force a surety bond". The register records the license, which is why this site describes Illinois agencies as licensed rather than bonded.