WASHINGTON—A number of trade groups have sent a joint letter to the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy Committee expressing their concerns over the FCC’s Declaratory Ruling and Order to clarify its interpretations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
The organizations are asking Congress to hold a hearing to give consumers and industry stakeholders an opportunity to provide input on the order since the rulemaking was not put out for comment.
The groups, including CUNA, NAFCU, the Consumer Mortgage Coalition, the Financial Services Roundtable and the Mortgage Bankers Association state that the order will have unforeseen consequences for financial institutions and their customers and members.
Leah Dempsey, senior director of advocacy and counsel for CUNA, explained that the joint letter states that the order will be detrimental to consumers by limiting their ability to receive information from their financial institutions via telephone or text messages—a position both CUNA and NAFCU have previously shared with Washington and NCUA.
“This FCC order must be modified for the protection of consumers and their ability to receive critically important information about their accounts from their financial institutions,” the letter stated. “This includes fraud alerts and data breaches, and other pertinent account information.”
Dempsey added that the letter emphasizes that the FCC order creates an “immense amount of uncertainty and potential liability for financial institutions.”
The order, as well, increases the chance for “frivolous class-action litigation” in this area, she said.
Dempsey said the letter asks for the Congressional hearing in light of the considerable impact the order will have on the financial services industry, consumers, and dozens of other industries.
In a separate letter sent to the FCC earlier this summer, NAFCU shared similar concerns.
NAFCU Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and General Counsel Carrie Hunt said, “NAFCU recognizes that the Commission adopted an exemption for ‘free end user calls’ made by financial institutions, specifically for the purpose of: (1) calls intended to prevent fraudulent transactions or identity theft; (2) data security breach notifications; (3) measures consumers may take to prevent identity theft following a data breach; and (4) money transfer notifications,” Hunt wrote. “However, the Order creates technical questions that may be impossible for a credit union to resolve, such as whether or not the member will be charged for such texts or calls by their plan provider, or if they will count against their plan limits. NAFCU believes that the FCC should provide more flexibility to the prescriptive requirements for financial institutions using this exemption, especially because this exemption meant to apply in exigent circumstances to protect consumers.”