Trai Tackles Fraud & Pesky Calls: Meeting with Financial Regulators

New Delhi, Jun 14 (PTI) Telecom regulator Trai has taken up pesky and fraud call issues with banking and financial services sector companies and regulators in a meeting held on Friday, an official statement said.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), in a statement, said all the regulators, banks and other financial institutions during the meeting emphasised the need to work collaboratively to curb the menace of spam, particularly through voice calls, and assured all cooperation for implementation of various initiatives to check them in a time bound manner.

The telecom regulator discussed the allocation of 160 series exclusively for making transactional and service voice calls, which has been earmarked for all entities regulated by the RBI, Sebi, Irdai and PFRDA in the first stage.

"Once it is implemented, it shall help in the easy identification of the calling entity and will prevent the duping of innocent citizens from the fraudsters. It was also discussed that the operation of the 140 series, at present being used for promotional purposes, is being migrated to the DLT platform and scrubbing of digital consent is also being operationalised. With the implementation of the above two measures, substantial control on spam calls from 10-digit numbers is expected," the statement said.

The meeting was attended by representatives from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai), more than 25 Banks and other financial institutions from the public and private sector, Members of Association of National Exchanges Members of India (ANMI) and all telecom operators.

The regulator deliberated on the Digital Consent Facility (DCA) established by the telecom operators, which enables the acquisition of digital consent from the customer.

The DCA facility enables senders, such as banks, insurance companies and other entities, to send promotional communications over SMS and voice to customers irrespective of their DND status.

"The role and obligations of senders such as banks, insurance companies and other entities with respect to TRAI regulations was also deliberated and it was decided to whitelist URLs/Apks in the content templates, use of a minimum number of headers and content templates, taking immediate action against the entity/TM in case of misuse of senders' credential etc," the statement said.