The American Bankers Association on Friday led a group of seven associations representing financial and electric utility industries in urging the Federal Communications Commission to revise or rescind certain rules that raise hurdles for banks and other businesses seeking to reach customers for crucial services, such as fraud alerts and fee avoidance alerts.
President Trump has directed federal agencies to eliminate regulations that are “unlawful,” and the FCC recently requested input from the public on regulations that are “unnecessary” or “affirmatively detrimental.” The Telephone Customer Protection Act was passed in 1991 to crack down on unwanted telemarketer calls, but the associations said that some FCC rules implementing the law create communication barriers between business and their customers, which Congress stated is not the intent of the law.
“Efficient, effective communications are essential if banks, credit unions, other financial services providers, electric utility companies and other businesses are to serve their customers and comply with their regulatory obligations,” the associations said in joint comments. “Our members regularly seek to send time-critical, non-telemarketing communications to large numbers of customers promptly”
Specifically, the groups asked the FCC to:
- Revise its February 2024 order on revocation of consent to ensure callers and text senders can accurately and efficiently process customer requests to revoke consent to receive autodialed or prerecorded voice calls.
- Remove the limitation, adopted in 2022, that permits callers to place, over a 30-day period, only three exempt informational prerecorded or artificial voice calls to residential numbers.
- Remove, from the commission’s 2015 order, the condition that permits a caller to place an exempt fraud alert or data reach notification (among other categories of calls exempted) only if the call is placed to a number that was provided by the customer.
