CMS Call Recording Requirements for 2027
CMS is cutting Medicare call-recording retention from 10 years to 6 and moving the required TPMO disclaimer, effective October 1, 2026. Here is exactly what changes, what stays the same, and a checklist to get ready before AEP.
What is changing Starting October 1, 2026, CMS is cutting how long Medicare sales and marketing call recordings must be kept, from 10 years down to 6, and it is changing when agents must read the required TPMO disclaimer. Both changes come from CMS's Contract Year 2027 final rule, they apply to independent agents and agencies acting as Third Party Marketing Organizations (TPMOs), and they take effect nine days before most agencies shift their full attention to the Annual Election Period. The rule you have been working under Since 2022, CMS has required Third Party Marketing Organizations — the category that covers independent Medicare agents, agencies, field marketing organizations and call centers doing sales or enrollment work on a carrier's behalf — to record marketing, sales and enrollment calls with beneficiaries in their entirety, and to keep those recordings for 10 years. CMS also requires a specific disclaimer to be read on relevant calls, and under the current rule it has to land within the first minute. CMS's own CY2024 agent and broker training guidance restates the recording requirement and ties it to 42 CFR §422.2274(g) for Medicare Advantage and the parallel §423.2274(g) for Part D. None of that changes for calls made before October 1, 2026. If you are mid-AEP prep and your recording and retention setup already meets the 10-year rule, it will keep meeting the rule for everything you recorded before the effective date. What CMS's CY2027 final rule changes CMS published the Contract Year 2027 final rule in the Federal Register on April 6, 2026, and summarized the marketing-rule changes in a separate CMS fact sheet . Two items in it affect how every Medicare agent handles calls, both effective for marketing and communications activity beginning October 1, 2026: Requirement Through September 30, 2026 Starting October 1, 2026 Recording retention 10 years, full audio 6 years total — years 1–3 must be audio, years 4–6 may be audio or a complete, accurate transcript TPMO disclaimer timing Read verbally within the first minute of the call Read verbally before any benefits are discussed The retention period is shorter, but it is not simpler: the first three years still have to be kept as audio. A transcript alone does not satisfy years 1–3, even though it is allowed for years 4 through 6. An agency that switches straight to transcript-only storage on October 1 to save space would be out of compliance for every call recorded from that date until the three-year mark. The disclaimer change removes the fixed one-minute clock. CMS's final rule notes that commenters found tying the disclaimer to a specific point in the conversation — before any plan benefit is discussed — more meaningful than a timestamp, since a fast-moving call can reach benefits talk well before the one-minute mark and a slow one can pass a minute before benefits ever come up. In practice this means training and scripts built around "say it in the first 60 seconds" need to be rewritten around "say it before you describe a single benefit," which is a different discipline for an agent to hold to on a live call. A compliance checklist for the transition Use this before October 1 arrives, and keep it as your standing checklist afterward: Confirm what "record in their entirety" means for every channel you use. Outbound dials, inbound queue calls, live transfers and any video-enabled enrollment meeting where benefits are discussed are all in scope if a beneficiary is on the other end. Check your retention window, not just your storage. If a vendor or your own archive purges recordings before 6 years, or purges audio before year 3, you are non-compliant even though the total period got shorter. Rewrite the disclaimer cue in your scripts. Replace any "within the first minute" instruction with "before you say anything about what a plan covers, costs or pays." Retrain before AEP, not during it. The disclaimer timing change lands right as call volume climbs for the Annual Election Period; an agent who has not drilled the new cue will default to old habits under call pressure. Keep the Scope of Appointment and disclaimer requirements separate in training. They are two different CMS rules with two different triggers, and conflating them is a common source of missed documentation. Our guide to Scope of Appointment record keeping for the 2027 AEP covers the SOA side in detail. Confirm who owns the archive if you change vendors. A retention requirement follows the recording, not the tool that made it — if you switch phone systems mid-cycle, the years already elapsed on existing recordings do not reset. Who has to act on this Three different people in a small agency need to hear about this change, and it is rarely the same person for all three: Agents on the phone need the new disclaimer cue drilled before AEP call volume climbs, not read about once in an email. Whoever administers your phone system or recording vendor needs to confirm the retention schedule matches 6 years with a 3-year audio floor, not just "whatever the old setting was, shortened." Whoever reviews calls for compliance needs an updated scorecard or checklist that scores the new disclaimer trigger, not the old one-minute timestamp. If your agency is small enough that one person wears all three hats, that is still three separate checks, not one. Why this is a coaching problem as much as a storage problem A shorter retention period is an easier lift than a moving disclaimer trigger. Retention is a system setting you configure once. Reading the disclaimer "before benefits are discussed" is a judgment call an agent makes on every live call, and it only shows up as a problem after the fact, when someone listens back and finds the disclaimer came two sentences after the agent already mentioned a copay. That is a call-review problem, not a policy problem: the only way to catch it consistently is to actually listen to calls against the new rule, at volume, during the exact weeks when agents are least likely to slow down and self-check. This is also where a recording-and-coaching workflow that already scores calls against compliance items earns its keep. In AgencyView, connecting your agency's RingCentral account brings calls, recordings and transcripts onto the client record automatically, and every plan includes pooled transcription minutes so a call is text-searchable, not just an audio file sitting in a queue. Calls scored through the platform's compliance scorecards are checked against items that include whether the agent disclosed the call was being recorded and whether the required disclaimer landed where it should — exactly the kind of check that catches a disclaimer read one beat too late, at a scale no manager can do by ear alone. See call recording and coaching for how the pieces connect, or read how AgencyView's AI call review flags calls for a manager in the piece on coaching the metric that actually closes . If you want the recording, the transcript and the compliance score sitting on the client record instead of spread across a phone system and a spreadsheet, that is what AgencyView is built to do. FAQ Do independent Medicare agents count as TPMOs? Yes. CMS defines TPMO broadly enough to include independent agents and agencies, field marketing organizations, and call centers that perform lead generation, marketing, sales or enrollment functions on behalf of a Medicare Advantage organization or Part D sponsor. If you sell Medicare plans and are not the carrier itself, the recording and disclaimer rules apply to you. Does the 6-year retention rule apply to calls I already recorded? The final rule and CMS's own fact sheet describe the change as effective for marketing and communications activity beginning October 1, 2026. Until you have specific guidance from your upline, FMO or carrier compliance team on how they are treating calls recorded before that date, the safer…
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