Employ only registered telemarketers to market services: RBI to banks

Mumbai: To address the problem of customer grievances, the Reserve Bank today asked banks to engage only registered telemarketers for their promotional activities.

In a notification, RBI said it was brought to its notice that many banks and financial institutions had engaged telemarketers for marketing their services, who were not registered with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

The unregistered telemarketers were using their normal telephone connections for making commercial calls to customers registered in the National Customer Preference Register. This is resulting in a lot of customer grievance, the notification said.

"It is, therefore, reiterated that banks should engage only those telemarketers who are registered in terms of the guidelines issued by TRAI, from time to time, for all their promotional/telemarketing activities," it added.

As per the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2010, issued by TRAI, any person involved in sending of commercial communications has to register with TRAI as a telemarketer.

The RBI had earlier advised banks to employ only those call centres or Direct Sales Agents (DSAs) who were registered as telemarketers with TRAI for soliciting or promoting any commercial transaction.

PTI