In the complex world of financial services, adhering to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) has become crucial. Banks and financial institutions can face serious legal and financial consequences if they don’t follow TCPA compliance requirements.

In this article, we’ll discuss the main TCPA risks that financial services businesses face and provide practical strategies for reducing these risks. From making sure you have strong proof of consent to using advanced tools to confirm that you’re disclosing information accurately and to minimize exposure to known litigants, we’ll show you how these strategies can help you protect your business and improve the return on your marketing investments.

What are the main TCPA risks for financial services?

The TCPA lays down stringent rules for businesses reaching out to consumers through phone calls, text messages, and faxes. For banks and financial services, not abiding by these regulations can result in serious legal and financial consequences, such as substantial fines and class-action lawsuits.

TCPA financial risk

The financial stakes are high. A single TCPA violation can lead to penalties of up to $1,500 per incident, and when multiplied across affected consumers, the costs can escalate rapidly, impacting your bottom line and financial standing.

Reputational damage

Beyond financial penalties, TCPA violations can damage a bank’s reputation. Consumers who feel harassed or annoyed by unsolicited communications may lose trust in the institution, leading to a decline in customer loyalty and potential loss of business.

Legal scrutiny

Banks and financial services companies are frequent targets for TCPA lawsuits due to the high volume of customer communications they manage. Heightened legal scrutiny can result in expensive legal disputes, siphoning resources and focus from primary business operations.

Compliance challenges

Navigating TCPA regulations can be complex, especially with evolving technologies and consumer preferences. Ensuring compliance requires a thorough understanding of the law and continuous monitoring of communication practices to avoid unintentional violations.

TCPA risk mitigation strategies for banks and financial services

Implementing strong compliance measures helps mitigate TCPA risk while maintaining high-quality lead generation efforts. Here’s how financial institutions can enhance TCPA compliance using ActiveProspect’s suite of tools.

1. Documenting consumer consent with TrustedForm

Under the TCPA, businesses must have prior express written consent before calling or texting consumers. This consent must be documented, time-stamped, and retained to help prove compliance in case of disputes.

TrustedForm is the ultimate compliance solution for documenting TCPA consent on digital lead capture forms. Here’s how it helps:

  • Near real-time Certificate of authenticity: TrustedForm Certify captures the moment a consumer fills out a web form, generating a TrustedForm Certificate.
  • Indisputable proof: The Certificate includes details like timestamp, IP address, user session replay, and lead source, ensuring businesses have a clear record of when and where consent was obtained.
  • Audit-ready documentation: TrustedForm Retain allows businesses to store and access Certificates for five years, providing a way to prove consent was obtained and mitigate potential TCPA claims.

For more information about TrustedForm and how it works, check out this guide.

2. Verifying disclosure language with TrustedForm Verify

Ensuring that your TCPA disclosure language is accurate, clear, and compliant is critical. Misleading or vague disclosures can lead to regulatory violations. Here’s how TrustedForm Verify helps:

  • Real-time monitoring of disclosure language: Verifies whether your web forms contain the correct TCPA-compliant disclosure text.
  • Automated compliance checks: If a form is missing required disclosure language, you can reject the lead automatically before it enters your pipeline, ensuring that only leads with the correct TCPA disclosure are accepted.
  • Consistent compliance across campaigns: Standardizes TCPA consent language across all lead sources, reducing the risk of inconsistent messaging.

3. Reducing risk from known litigants with LeadConduit

A significant TCPA risk comes from serial litigators – individuals who intentionally opt into lead forms to later file lawsuits.

ActiveProspect offers a product that helps you automatically enhance and filter your lead flows in real time to deliver the highest-quality prospects to your CRM or lead buyer. Here’s how LeadConduit helps:

  • Litigators scrubbing: By using specific add-ons – such as Litigator Scrub by Contact Center Compliance (DNC.com) – it can immediately identify and block leads associated with known TCPA litigants before they enter your CRM.
  • Real-time data filtering: Thanks to the Litigation Firewall add-on, it can filter out high-risk numbers from both outbound campaigns and inbound calls.
  • Proactive risk reduction: Prevents banks from engaging with high-risk leads, minimizing legal exposure.

4. Maximizing ROI by rejecting low-quality leads with LeadConduit

Financial institutions must ensure that marketing dollars as well as account representatives’ time and resources are spent on high-quality, genuinely interested, compliant leads. Engaging with fraudulent, invalid, or duplicate records wastes resources and increases TCPA risk. Here’s how LeadConduit helps:

  • Duplicate detection: Automatically rejects duplicate leads, preventing unnecessary marketing spend.
  • Contact validation: BriteVerify’s phone verification add-on helps filter out leads with invalid phone numbers and email addresses.
  • Internal DNC list enforcement: Ensures that no calls or texts are made to contacts on your internal Do-Not-Call (DNC) list.
  • Custom rule automation: Banks can configure LeadConduit to reject any lead that doesn’t meet their compliance or quality criteria.

Explore all available LeadConduit add-ons here.

Final thoughts

Mitigating TCPA risk is critical for financial services, and leveraging tools like TrustedForm and LeadConduit can significantly reduce compliance challenges. By documenting consent, verifying disclosure accuracy, blocking known litigants, and filtering out low-quality leads, banks can ensure compliance while maximizing the ROI from their marketing efforts.

This proactive approach not only safeguards them legally but also fortifies their standing in the industry.

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Written by Marialuisa Aldeghi

Marialuisa brings a wealth of expertise to the table as an accomplished content writer and strategist with years of experience in the B2B digital marketing landscape.

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