CUs ‘Deserve Relief’ From Robocall Rules: NAFCU

Robocalls are considered annoying and disruptive by roughly 90-95% of the country, according to a survey from the American Association of Retired Persons. These not-surprising survey findings are part of a larger problem that lawmakers and officials from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must solve: How to regulate robocalls and take action against the illegal calls made by potentially shady organizations, while not negatively impacting the ability of credit unions to warn members about items such as fraud alerts.

Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate Commerce subcommittee about rules and regulations aimed at targeting illegal and fraudulent robocalls, NAFCU Vice President of Legislative Affairs Brad Thaler wrote to subcommittee members stating the FCC’s efforts to control or reduce illegal robocalls and robotexts have “hurt credit unions attempting to make legitimate and useful informational calls.”

According to Thaler’s letter filed Monday, NAFCU supports the FCC’s efforts in clamping down on illegal robocall and robotext actors, but the rules have treated credit unions as bad actors, too.

“The FCC should, however, find ways to tailor its regulations to focus on bad actors instead of sweeping in good actors like credit unions in broadly written regulations,” Thaler wrote. “As community-based, member-owned financial institutions, credit unions play no part in illegal communications and are not the type of entity the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was intended to target. Over the years, the FCC has created a regulatory labyrinth that has enriched plaintiffs’ attorneys and hurt credit unions attempting to make legitimate and useful informational calls. Credit unions deserve relief so that they may contact their members about important information regarding their accounts without a high risk of frivolous lawsuits.”

While Thaler called on the FCC to better tailor its regulations to target bad actors, the reality is the Commission hasn’t done enough to protect credit unions and the legal actors, he said.

He wrote, “A prime example is the FCC’s recent proposed rule regarding robocalls and robotexts that would restrict a credit union’s ability to obtain a consumer’s single consent for multiple uses. This proposal could prevent important communications such as ‘fraud alerts’ from reaching a credit union member. As such, there needs to be a reasonably fast remediation timeline when call carriers accidentally block legitimate texts. Additionally, credit union member ‘opt-ins’ to robotexts should be interpreted to give both the credit union and its relevant service provider partners authority to robotext members.

“Finally, consumers are able to provide their consent through mobile applications, over the phone or in writing, so the FCC should display or otherwise provide the list of entities the consumer is giving consent to for each of these avenues,” Thaler said.

He explained to the subcommittee members that the FCC must “consider the needs of credit unions and avoid mislabeling credit unions’ legitimate communications” to their members.