In a comment letter submitted Tuesday, the American Bankers Association urged the Federal Communications Commission not to impose additional regulation on foreign call centers belonging to banks and other non-telecommunications companies. Instead, the FCC should finalize separate ABA-supported proposals that would combat fraud, including proposals to impose stronger “know your customer” requirements on voice service providers that originate calls and stronger requirements on “upstream” providers that allow calls to pass through their network.
Eleven bank, credit union and nondepository trade associations joined ABA in submitting the letter.
The FCC proposed to impose on the foreign call centers of telecommunications companies an English proficiency requirement, a limit on the percentage of customer service calls that may be made from or answered at these call centers, a mandatory disclosure at the beginning of calls handled at a foreign call center, a right for the consumer to have the call transferred to a U.S.-based call center, and a prohibition on using foreign call centers to handle communications involving sensitive customer data. The FCC asked whether it should impose these requirements on calls involving the foreign call centers of non-telecommunications companies using its authority under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and section 451(e) of the Communications Act.
The trade groups said that the FCC does not have statutory authority to impose these restrictions on the foreign call centers of non-telecommunications companies.
“The associations support the commission’s policy and enforcement actions targeting illegal call spoofing,” the groups said. “But the proposal [to regulate foreign call centers] would not advance the commission’s anti-fraud policy agenda. Instead, it would regulate valued customer-service communications between our members — which are not telecommunications providers — and their customers.”
