IBA issues RFP on National Do Not Call Registry

Mumbai, Dec 14 (UNI) In a bid to provide bank customers with a one-stop solution, the Indian Banks' Association (IBA) has tied up with Indian Cards Council (ICC) and Master Card World Wide to setup a common Do-Not-Call-Registry, which will operate on behalf of the entire Banking and Financial Services.

The Do-Not-Call Registry, once in place, will allow customers who prefer not to receive telemarketing calls relating to banks' financial services products to contact one centralized registry to activate this preference, said an IBA statement.

Telemarketers will be required to refrain from calling consumers who have put themselves on this registry, it added.

Taking the proposal forward IBA today issued a 'Request for Proposal' (RFP) for the 'Do-Not-Call-Registry' initiative. The IBA and ICC anticipate that telemarketers would need to access the Do-Not-Call Registry at least on a fortnightly basis in order to ensure that the numbers they wish to call are not on the national centralized Do-Not-Call-Registry.

Once in place, the IBA initiative will bring Indian consumers' banking experiences at par with global standards. It would enable banks to operate from a shared platform and ensure that customers only need to register once with the common 'Do-Not-Call-Registry'' to prevent telemarketing calls from both banks and their Direct Selling Agents.

Meanwhile, IBA informed that the RFP is available on the IBA website www.iba.org.in. and the last date of submitting the completed proposals is January 18, 2007.

This initiative was in compliance with Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines asking each bank to setup a registry for customers who do not wish to receive tele-marketing calls from the banks.

Banks set-up their own system but customers are required to register with each bank separately.

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