Last updated: September 9, 2026
This page quotes federal regulation and is not legal advice. Check the wording against the current CMS text and ask your own counsel.
What the TPMO disclaimer requires
A TPMO delivers the CMS disclaimer verbally during sales calls before any discussion of plan benefits, records the call in its entirety, and keeps it under the retention rule in force. Which wording applies depends on whether the organization represents every plan in the service area. Order on the call is what a scored transcript settles.
The question in September is whether the disclaimer your agents read last October is still compliant this October. For most agencies it is not, because the trigger moved off the clock. Delivery inside the first minute of the call was the old standard. The current text at 42 CFR 422.2267(e)(41)(ii) requires it "Verbally conveyed during sales calls prior to the discussion of any benefits," and the CY2027 marketing provisions take effect October 1, 2026, fourteen days before the Annual Enrollment Period opens.
None of that requires a new script. One written against the first minute usually lands the disclaimer around second forty, which passes a stopwatch and fails the current rule the moment an agent names a plan at second twenty. The fix is to move it above the first line that touches a benefit.
All of it attaches to TPMO status rather than a job title, so start with what a TPMO is if you are unsure the rules reach you. CMS call recording requirements at 42 CFR 422.2274 carries the six year math.
The version for a TPMO that does not represent every plan
The regulation calls this standardized content, which is its way of saying the language goes out as written. For an organization selling some of the plans in an 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."
Our reading is that the bracketed counts belong to the service area on the call rather than the agency. An agency appointed with nine carriers statewide can represent four in one county, and the counts move when a contract ends.
The version for a TPMO that represents every plan in the area
A second version at the same paragraph covers a TPMO selling for all the MA organizations in its 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."
A scope line at (e)(41)(i) attaches the disclaimer to a TPMO "that sells plans on behalf of more than one MA organization." An organization captive to a single carrier reads as outside it, though plan contracts usually put it back inside. Take that one to counsel.
When it has to be said, and what changed
The first minute standard is superseded. Twelve words at 422.2267(e)(41)(ii) put the trigger in the conversation instead of on the clock, so an agent trained to get the disclaimer out inside sixty seconds is measuring the wrong thing on a fast call.
Most agencies land somewhere simpler, with the disclaimer as the first substantive thing the agent says after the greeting. That is more conservative than the text, which leaves room for an identification line above it. We would still put it first, for a reason unrelated to the regulation: an agent on call forty of a Tuesday does not parse the boundary of the word benefits in real time.
What counts as a discussion of benefits
The regulation leaves the phrase undefined, so what follows is a reading rather than a rule, and counsel should draw this line for your agency.
A plan name crosses it. So does a premium figure, a copay amount, the phrase zero dollar premium, or a comparison between what the beneficiary has now and what you sell. A dollar figure attached to coverage is the clearest case, since it reads as a benefit with or without a plan name. Above the line sit the greeting and confirming you reached the person you dialed.
The awkward case is the caller who gets there first. A beneficiary who opens by asking whether the plan covers their dentist has started the discussion, and the agent still owes the disclaimer before answering. That is how a compliant script produces a non compliant call.
Where the disclaimer goes outside a phone call
Surfaces that are not a call carry the same obligation. The disclaimer is "Electronically conveyed" through email and online chat, "Prominently displayed on TPMO websites," and included in "print materials and television advertisements." Only the sales call version has a timing trigger, and the rest is placement, which makes a website footer easy to get right and easy to forget.
What a failed disclaimer looks like in a recording
No agency can answer the disclaimer question from a call log or an agent's memory of the season. It is two timestamps and a subtraction. Transcribe the recording with speaker separation and the disclaimer sits at a second, the first benefit mention sits at a second, and when the benefit second is the smaller of the two the call failed, with two lines of transcript as the evidence.
That is unusual for a QA criterion. Most of what a program argues about has no second attached and no settled answer, and the disclaimer has both, which is why an automated score on this one beats a supervisor's sample.
Say an agency ran 18 agents through last AEP at about 35 calls a day across the 54 days of enrollment, which is roughly 34,000 recorded calls. Two scored calls per agent per week over eight weeks produces about 290 reviews, and those 290 cannot tell you whether one agent on the evening shift had a habit.
The output an FMO wants is narrower than a compliance report. One row per agent, with calls scored, disclaimer present, disclaimer before the first benefit mention, and the median gap in seconds. A floor that reads the disclaimer on every call and still lands it after benefits on nine percent of them has both a training problem and a script problem, and that table separates them.
Two cases need a human read. An agent who reads the opening sentence and drops the Medicare.gov line has said something a loose phrase list will match on, so it scores present when a compliance reader would call it short. The second is a transfer, where it is not obvious which agent owed the disclaimer.
CallSniper handles that part. Calls get ingested after they end, transcribed and diarized, then scored against a scorecard your team defines, with the disclaimer held as a phrase set in the vocabulary library. Searchable transcripts with timestamps mean a score opens at the moment that produced it, which is the only evidence an agent accepts in coaching. Manual upload takes last season's folder without touching your dialer, and Trinsic's own model runs on its own infrastructure, so audio never reaches a public model provider. More on call QA for Medicare agencies.
Scoring it as a critical fail rather than a deduction
A disclaimer failure does not take points off a call. It voids the score.
An 87 on a call where benefits came up first describes a non compliant call in detail, which is a strange document to hand a plan partner. A critical fail reaches a supervisor the same day instead.
Absence, or delivery after a benefit, belongs in the auto fail column with no partial credit. Completeness of the wording works better as a point criterion, since a dropped closing sentence is a coaching problem and a missing disclaimer is a compliance event. A Medicare sales call scorecard carries the disclaimer as a 12 point auto fail with the wording criterion beside it at 8. Calibration variance here should sit near zero, and two supervisors disagreeing means the phrase list needs rewriting.
Two limits worth stating
Machine scoring holds up on a fixed phrase at a fixed point in a call and gets soft on anything asking for a read on tone, which Aircall and StackAI both say about automated QA generally. The disclaimer sits on the good side of that line, an empathy criterion three rows down does not, and a scorecard treating both the same way loses the floor's trust.
A bigger limit sits behind that one, and nobody selling software enjoys saying it out loud. Scoring proves your agents followed the script. It says nothing about whether the script is right. An agency that runs 34,000 calls against last season's wording gets a clean report on a wrong sentence.
Checking last season before this one opens
- Pull the audio from your busiest week of last AEP and score it for where the disclaimer landed against where the first benefit came up, sorted by agent.
- Put your disclaimer script beside the 42 CFR 422.2267(e)(41) text and have counsel confirm the wording, the version, and the bracketed counts per service area.
- Move the disclaimer above the first line that touches a benefit, train the change, and rescore in week one of AEP.
The recording notice at the top of the call is state law rather than CMS, so your recording disclosure script is a separate obligation.
Frequently asked questions
When do you have to read the TPMO disclaimer?
Under 42 CFR 422.2267(e)(41)(ii) the disclaimer is verbally conveyed during sales calls prior to the discussion of any benefits. The earlier standard tied to the first minute of the call is superseded, so an agent who quotes a premium at second twenty has already missed it.
What is the TPMO disclaimer for 2026?
The standardized language at 42 CFR 422.2267(e)(41) opens "We do not offer every plan available in your area" and carries bracketed counts for the organizations and products you represent there, plus the referral to Medicare.gov or 1-800-MEDICARE. A second version covers a TPMO representing every plan locally.
Does the TPMO disclaimer have to be read word for word?
That phrase, standardized content, is what puts the wording beyond an agent's discretion. Paraphrase is where audits get interesting, and a transcript makes a paraphrase obvious after the fact. Whether your wording passes is a question for your counsel and your plan partners.
Who has to say the TPMO disclaimer?
The obligation follows TPMO status under 42 CFR 422.2260, which turns on being compensated for lead generation, marketing, sales, or enrollment related work in the chain of enrollment. Job title decides nothing. What a TPMO is runs the definition against real arrangements.
What happens if the disclaimer comes after the benefits?
The call did not meet the requirement at 42 CFR 422.2267(e)(41)(ii), and the regulation attaches no penalty schedule to a single call. In practice the enforcement path runs through your plan contracts, since a carrier's oversight of its chain of enrollment is what surfaces it. Score it as a critical fail.
Get a disclaimer number from last season's calls
The number you do not have is one line long: the share of last season's sales calls where the disclaimer landed before the first benefit mention, broken out by agent. A clean one is written evidence for the plan partner who asks, and a bad one shows where the script needs fixing.
Getting six months of audio out of a dialer sucks, and it is a one time cost. The paid pilot runs that archive through the scorer and ends in about 30 minutes on Zoom on your own calls, at a fixed pilot price. Schedule a demo and bring last October, since that audio already exists and nobody has listened to most of it.
Sources
- Disclaimer language, both versions, and the delivery paragraphs at (e)(41)(i) through (v). 42 CFR 422.2267(e)(41), read via Cornell LII on 2026-09-09. Page shows most recent amendment 91 FR 17583, April 6, 2026. Verified against a primary text mirror. Read again on eCFR before publishing.
- Timing trigger, verbally conveyed during sales calls prior to the discussion of any benefits. 42 CFR 422.2267(e)(41)(ii), read via Cornell LII on 2026-09-09. Verified against a primary text mirror.
- TPMO definition, compensation and the chain of enrollment. 42 CFR 422.2260, read via Cornell LII on 2026-09-09. Page shows most recent amendment 87 FR 27898, May 9, 2022. Verified against a primary text mirror.
- Recording and retention obligation, referenced once. 42 CFR 422.2274, read via Cornell LII on 2026-09-09. Verified against a primary text mirror. Detail belongs to the CMS call recording requirements page.
- That the prior timing standard was delivery within the first minute of the call. Agent facing summaries gathered 2026-09-08. Secondary, unverified. Confirm against the superseded CFR text or drop the comparison.
- CY2027 final rule (CMS-4208-F3) for the October 1, 2026 effective date of the marketing provisions. Secondary, from agent facing summaries gathered 2026-09-08. Verify against the Federal Register publication before publishing.
- Removal of the SHIP referral from the disclaimer, elimination of the 48 hour Scope of Appointment waiting period, and enrollment record retention of ten years. Secondary and unverified, from the same summaries. None of the three is stated as fact on this page.
- Annual Enrollment Period opening October 15. Standard CMS enrollment calendar, widely established. Confirm on cms.gov or medicare.gov before publishing.
- Aircall and StackAI, on automated scoring being more reliable on rule based criteria than on subjective tone. Third party, gathered 2026-09-08. Unverified.
- Per service area reading of the bracketed counts, and the reading of what counts as a discussion of benefits. Editorial interpretation for this page, labeled as such in the body.
- Transcript timestamps, speaker diarization, vocabulary library phrase sets, critical fail flags, and manual upload. CallSniper product documentation. Verified.