The American Bankers Association this week sent a letter urging the Federal Communications Commission to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking that would adopt several ABA requests to modernize the FCC’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules and combat illegal call spoofing. The FCC is scheduled to vote Oct. 28 on whether to issue the notice.
The TCPA is a 1991 law that regulates telemarketing and informational calls using automated processes. The draft rulemaking under consideration contains changes to the FCC’s TCPA rules that ABA has urged the commission to make. They are:
- The FCC proposes to delete the “revoke all” rule. Under the TCPA, with limited exceptions, a bank or other business can place an autodialed or prerecorded voice call or text message only with the prior express consent of the called party. A called party has the right to revoke consent to receive these calls. In a 2024 order, the FCC required a business to treat a consumer’s revocation of consent to receive one type of call or message as a revocation of all consented-to calls and messages (the “revoke all” rule). Since the Trump Administration took office, ABA has led a joint industry effort to urge the FCC to rescind the revoke-all rule. The draft notice of proposed rulemaking would do that.
- The FCC seeks comment on permitting callers to designate the exclusive means by which consumers may revoke consent, rather than requiring callers to honor all revocation requests made using “reasonable means.” ABA previously urged the FCC to take this step. Current FCC rules allow consumers to revoke consent through “any reasonable means,” which has created significant challenges for banks in processing customers’ revocation requests accurately and efficiently.
- The FCC proposes to eliminate the “provided number” condition that allows banks and other financial institutions to place calls under an existing exemption for fraud alerts only to numbers that were provided by the customer to the institution. For the past decade, ABA has sought removal of this condition, which creates a challenge for banks to utilize the exemption.
- When a consumer asks the caller to stop placing telemarketing calls to the consumer, current rules require the caller to place the consumer on its internal “do-not-call” list. The FCC proposes to delete this requirement.
To combat illegal call spoofing:
- The FCC proposes to enhance the effectiveness of the STIR/SHAKEN call authentication framework by requiring terminating providers to transmit verified caller name or other caller identity information for presentation on a consumer’s handset whenever the provider transmits a call with the representation that the caller has received an “A-level” attestation – the highest form of attestation under STIR/SHAKEN. ABA has raised concerns that bad actors are obtaining “A-level” attestation, which signals that the originating provider knows that the caller has lawful access to the number being displayed in the recipient’s caller ID display. ABA has also called on the FCC to prohibit the display of data on a consumer’s caller ID device when the authenticity of the call cannot be adequately verified through a verified relationship with the call originator.
- The FCC proposes to require originating voice service providers that transmit caller identity information to employ reasonable measures to verify the accuracy of the information transmitted. The FCC also seeks comment on requiring providers to use “Rich Call Data,” or RDC, to transmit the verified caller’s name on IP networks. Under RCD, when a recipient receives a call from a legitimate company, the company’s logo would appear in the caller ID display, signaling the legitimacy of the call.
- The FCC proposes to require voice service providers to implement measures to ensure consumers know which calls originate from outside the U.S. and to prohibit spoofing of U.S. telephone numbers for calls that originate from outside the U.S.
If the FCC votes to issue the notice of proposed rulemaking at its Oct. 28 open meeting, the public will have an opportunity to comment.
