RBI, SEBI-regulated firms asked to switch to ‘160’ number series

Most unwanted calls are related to financial services and real estate. (Reuters)

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday said entities regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), and Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) will switch to ‘160’ phone number series for service and transactional calls in the first stage.

This means that service and transactional calls from insurance companies, banks and financial companies, among other entities, will come from phone numbers starting with ‘160’. The move is aimed at helping consumers easily identify calling entities to prevent the duping of users from fraudsters.

The decision was taken in a meeting between Trai’s officials and representatives from RBI, SEBI, and IRDAI on Friday. Over 25 banks and other financial institutions including government, private and global banks, telcos, also attended the meeting.

“It was also discussed that the operation of 140 series, at present being used for promotional purpose, is being migrated to DLT (distributed ledger technology) platform and scrubbing of digital consent is also being operationalized,” Trai said.

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With the implementation of 160 series for service and transactional calls, and 140 series for marketing calls, substantial control on spam calls from 10-digit numbers is expected, Trai said. Currently, most of the 10-digit spam numbers from the companies are being blocked by the telcos directly using artificial intelligence and machine learning methods.

In the meeting, the regulators also decided to whitelist URLs/ Apks in the content templates, use of minimum number of headers and content templates for SMSes, and take immediate action against the entity/telemarketer in case of misuse of senders’ credential.

Lately, the department of consumer affairs is working to release draft guidelines to control unwanted spam calls and messages. Once the new guidelines are issued and implemented, it would be the first time that banks, fintech companies, real estate developers, and others, will be directly held liable for such spam communication as these entities outsource their promotional sales to third-party agencies.

According to a recent survey by community social media platform LocalCircles, 60% of mobile subscribers get three or more spam calls on an average every day. Most unwanted calls are related to financial services and real estate.

The survey said 54% of respondents are receiving pesky calls from companies such as Bajaj Finance, HDFC Bank, HDFC Life Insurance, IDFC First Bank, among others, while 22% are getting calls from companies selling real estate.