TRAI cautions banks, financial institutions against unregistered calls

These calls violate "The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference (Thirteenth Amendment) Regulations, 2010'

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has cautioned banks and financial institutions against use of unregistered telemarketers for promoting their business, an official said Monday.

"The authority has taken a series of measures for addressing the menace of Unsolicited Commercial Communications. However, notwithstanding the action taken by TRAI, a large number of complaints continued to be received from consumers regarding calls/SMSs originated by unregistered telemarketers on behalf of banks, insurance companies, builders etc. for promoting their business in utter disregard to the regulations issued by the authority," a TRAI spokesperson said here.

The TRAI has said such behaviour of these banks and companies is in violation of "The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference (Thirteenth Amendment) Regulations, 2010", which provides that in case complaints continue to come in, then on receipt of the third complaint, all the telecom resources of the entity or organization shall be disconnected.

The TRAI has named such banks and financial institutions which have been flouting the aforesaid regulation by marketing their products and services through unregistered telemarketers. These banks or financial institutions are - Axis Bank, Citi Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra, Punjab National Bank and the State Bank of India.

These institutions have been directed to look into the specific cases of breach, initiate corrective action and report back to the authority within a period of seven days, failing which the banks are liable to have all their telecom resources disconnected throughout the country.