Medicare Plan Distributors Add Call Recording Tools

Two big insurance distributors, Senior Market Sales and Integrity Marketing Group, today introduced tools that retail insurance sellers can use to record calls with customers and prospects.

Integrity Marketing, a Dallas-based company with relationships with about 500,000 agents and distributors, has set up a call recording service, which is free for registered users, at MedicareCenter.com.

SMS, an Omaha, Nebraska-based company with relationships with about 70,000 agents, said it has worked with Phone.com to provide a call-recording tool and is adding the tool to its Lead Advantage Pro support services package.

The distributors added the tools to help agents, brokers and consultants comply with new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid call recording requirements for people who help consumers sign up for Medicare Advantage plans and Medicare supplement insurance policies.

What It Means

If you have to comply with the new CMS call recording requirements, there are alternatives to holding a tape recorder up to the phone.

Advisors who do not think of themselves as insurance agents but who help clients with questions about Medicare should consider talking to their own compliance advisors about whether they need to record Medicare-related calls.

The TPMO Rules

CMS has responded to concerns about high-pressured, advertising-driven Medicare plan telemarketing campaigns by defining a broad class of “third party marketing organizations,” in regulations completed in April, and requiring all TPMOs to begin recording calls starting Oct. 1.

All TPMOs, including retail agents and brokers, who represent only some of the Medicare plans available in a given market — rather than all — are supposed to warn consumers about that within the first minute of the conversation.

TPMOs are supposed to record calls and save the recordings for at least 10 years so that they can show auditors later that they assessed consumers’ needs properly, explained Medicare plan benefits well and made sure that consumers understood that they were signing up for some coverage.

The Medicare Advantage and Medicare drug plan annual enrollment period for 2023 starts Oct. 15 and is set to run through Dec. 7.

Many retail producers support CMS efforts to rein in the national telemarketing programs but have concerns about how workable the new rules are for traditional local agents and brokers. At press time, Agents and Brokers Against CMS Call Recording, a producer group, had attracted about 11,000 of the signatures sought for a petition opposing the current version of the new call recording requirements.

(Image: CMS)