TPMO Disclaimer Requirements Change October 1, 2026
CMS's Medicare TPMO disclaimer keeps its exact wording, but the timing rule and one referral sentence change October 1, 2026, ahead of the 2027 AEP. Here's what to update before the season starts.
What the TPMO disclaimer requirements are, and what changes on October 1 If you sell Medicare Advantage or Part D as an independent agent, CMS classifies you as a Third-Party Marketing Organization (TPMO), and the TPMO disclaimer requirements say you must speak or display a specific, word-for-word statement before you discuss plan benefits, on every call, website, printed piece, email, text and social post that meets CMS's definition of marketing. The wording itself hasn't changed. What changes on October 1, 2026 — ahead of the 2027 Annual Enrollment Period — is when you have to say it on a call, and one sentence you can now leave out. The exact wording CMS requires The disclaimer isn't a paraphrase you can put in your own words. 42 CFR §422.2267(e)(41) and the matching Part D rule at 42 CFR §423.2267(e)(41) give the two required versions: If you don't sell every plan in your service area: “We do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent insert number of organizations organizations which offer insert number of plans products in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov or 1-800-MEDICARE to get information on all of your options.” If you do sell every plan in your service area: “Currently we represent insert number of organizations organizations which offer insert number of plans products in your area. You can always contact Medicare.gov or 1-800-MEDICARE for help with plan choices.” Those bracketed numbers are the only part you fill in yourself — how many carriers you're appointed with and how many of their products you sell in that service area. Everything else is fixed text, and CMS's own 2026 Agent and Broker Training & Testing Guidelines list the disclaimer as required material every agent has to be tested on. What actually changes October 1, 2026 Timing: from "first minute" to "before benefits" Under the prior rule, the disclaimer had to be read within the first minute of a sales or marketing call, which meant reading it before you'd even confirmed why the beneficiary was calling. CMS's Contract Year 2027 Medicare Advantage and Part D final rule moves the trigger to before any discussion of plan benefits instead. In practice, that means you can collect basic demographic information and confirm the beneficiary's election period first, and only need to have delivered the disclaimer once you start talking about a specific plan's coverage, cost or network. If it turns out the person doesn't have a valid enrollment period, you may not need to deliver it on that call at all — as long as benefits never came up. One line comes out: the SHIP referral The same final rule lets agents drop the reference to State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIPs) from the disclaimer. If your current script or printed disclaimer still tells beneficiaries to contact their SHIP for more options, that sentence is no longer required — though the core wording above still is. Two related changes, covered in more depth elsewhere The same rule package also shortens how long marketing and sales call recordings must be retained, and removes a separate waiting period on Scope of Appointment forms. Neither is the disclaimer itself, so we've written them up on their own: see CMS Call Recording Requirements for 2027 for the retention change, and Scope of Appointment Record Keeping for the 2027 AEP for the SOA change. Where the disclaimer has to show up The TPMO disclaimer requirements aren't limited to phone calls. CMS's marketing definition is broad enough to catch most of what an agent sends a beneficiary: Channel What's required Sales and marketing calls Spoken verbatim before plan benefits are discussed (as of Oct. 1, 2026) Websites and landing pages Displayed in a readable font, anywhere plan information appears Print materials and mailers Included in full; no required placement on the page, but it must appear Email Included in the body of any message that discusses specific plans Text messages Included, subject to the same content rules as other marketing Social media posts Required if the post includes your agent phone number or discusses plans A carrier-produced flyer you hand out unaltered generally already carries the disclaimer. The moment you edit that flyer, or build your own from scratch, the disclaimer requirement is on you again. Filling in your own numbers Most of the compliance risk here isn't the wording — it's stale numbers. If you add a carrier appointment or a new plan in the spring and never update the disclaimer you saved in March, every piece of marketing you send between then and AEP is technically non-compliant. Before AEP, agents and agencies should: Confirm the current count of MA/Part D organizations you're appointed and actively selling for in each service area you market to. Confirm the current count of distinct plan products across those organizations. Decide which version applies — the "we do not offer every plan" version, or the "represent X organizations" version, if you genuinely sell every plan in that county. Update every saved script, template, signature block and printed piece that carries the old numbers. Confirm whoever answers your agency's main line or handles live transfers is using the current wording, not a version from last AEP. Example (illustrative, not a real agency): a five-agent Medicare agency picks up two new carrier appointments in June and drops one that stopped paying renewals in August. By AEP, the disclaimer three of its agents are still reading says "12 organizations," when the real count is 13. Nobody lied on purpose — the number was correct when someone wrote the script back in the spring, and no one owned updating it once the appointments changed. That's the failure mode worth guarding against: not agents ignoring the rule, but a correct answer going stale the moment your carrier lineup does. A pre-AEP disclaimer checklist Disclaimer wording matches one of the two CMS-model versions above, word for word. Organization and product counts are current for each service area you sell in. Any SHIP referral sentence has been removed or kept intentionally — not left in by default. Call scripts are marked so agents read the disclaimer before discussing benefits, not on autopilot at second zero. Every client-facing plan comparison, quote page or PDF carries the disclaimer before it goes out. Website footer, text templates and any social post that names plans or a callback number are updated. How AgencyView keeps this from drifting AgencyView's call script library builds the CMS-required disclaimer into Medicare scripts word for word, marked to be read verbatim rather than paraphrased, alongside the compliance rule it comes from — so an agent working a T65 call, a live transfer or an annual review sees the same fixed text every time, not whatever they remember from last year. The AEP Review tool goes a step further for anything sent to a client: an agency sets its TPMO disclaimer once, choosing the CMS-model wording that fits whether it sells every plan in an area or not, and that text is attached automatically to every client-facing plan review. A review can't be shared with a client until that disclaimer is filled in with real numbers — no placeholder brackets left in by accident. We covered the client side of that same tool in Show Your Medicare Clients Their AEP Review, Then Send Them a Copy . For the rest of what a Medicare-focused CRM should track around AEP — turning-65 outreach, SOA capture, pending policies — see AgencyView's Medicare agent CRM page. FAQ Does the TPMO disclaimer apply to captive agents, or only independent ones? The compensation and disclaimer rules in this part of the CFR are aimed at independent agents and brokers and the third parties that work with them. Captive agents working exclusively for one carrier fall under that carrier's own marketing compliance…
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