Stopping unwanted calls, texts and marketing from financial firms

Unwanted sales calls about loans, insurance, pensions and investments are not just annoying: much of what arrives on your phone is against the rules, and there are free, official ways to stop it. The first step for most people is registering with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), a free register of people who have said they do not want to receive marketing calls¹. You can register a landline or a mobile, online or by phone, at no cost¹. The second step, which many people miss, is withdrawing consent you have already given: if a bank, lender or insurer has your permission to contact you, the TPS alone will not silence it, but you have a legal right to tell the firm to stop, and it cannot refuse¹.

There are also calls the register was never designed to catch. The TPS may not stop overseas calls², and it does nothing about scam calls, which ignore every rule. Some of the most dangerous calls are outright illegal: cold calling about pensions has been banned in most circumstances since 2019, so a stranger phoning about your pension is breaking the law before they say a word³. This page explains what the TPS covers, how to tell a firm to stop, what to report and to whom, and how to spot the scam calls that imitate the TPS, regulators and banks. If a call may be fraud rather than marketing, the scams and fraud guide covers that side in full.

The Telephone Preference Service: a free register against sales calls

The Telephone Preference Service is the UK's official opt-out register for marketing calls. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the regulator that handles predatory, nuisance marketing calls, describes it plainly: the TPS is a register of people who have said they do not want to receive marketing calls¹. Once your number is on it, it is against the rules for a legitimate UK business to make unsolicited sales and marketing calls to you. The service is free of charge, and you can register either a landline or a mobile number¹.

The register works because reputable firms screen their call lists against it. A business that calls a registered number with a marketing pitch is breaking the rules set out in privacy law, and each complaint made about it feeds into the ICO's enforcement work. That is the mechanism: your registration does not physically block calls, it makes them unlawful and reportable.

The TPS has a postal counterpart. The Mail Preference Service is a free service where you can register your preference not to receive unsolicited direct mail³, which deals with the loan and insurance offers that come through the letterbox rather than the phone. Registering with one does not register you with the other, so if post is also a problem, that is a separate, equally free sign-up.

It is worth being clear about what the TPS is not. It is not a call blocker, it does not screen individual calls as they arrive, and it does not cover calls from overseas firms that never check the register². It also does not override consent you have already given to a particular company, which is the single most common reason people still receive calls after registering. The next two sections deal with how to register, and then with those limits.

How to register a landline or mobile

Registering is straightforward and free. You can register on 0345 070 0707 or online⁸, and you can add both a landline and a mobile number¹. There is no fee at any point, and no renewal charge: once a number is on the register it stays there.

A few practical points make the registration more effective:

• Register every number that receives the calls, including a mobile used mainly by someone else in the household, such as an older relative targeted by loan and insurance calls.
• If you are registering on behalf of someone else, the extra support and third-party access guide explains the authority a firm may need before discussing or changing someone else's arrangements.
• Keep a note of the date you registered. If calls continue from a UK firm, that date matters when you report it, because the rules bite from registration onwards.

If the calls that worry you are not marketing but attempts to take money, the register is the wrong tool. Scam callers ignore it completely, and the section on scam calls below covers the warning signs. For silent or abandoned calls, where the line goes dead or a recorded message plays, the complaint goes to Ofcom rather than the ICO¹.

Where the TPS stops: earlier consent, texts and overseas calls

Registration is not a wall, and there are three gaps worth understanding before concluding it has failed.

The first and largest gap is consent you gave before registering. If you agreed an organisation could make live marketing calls to you, but you then registered with the TPS after this, the organisation can still call you¹. Ticking a box on an application form, agreeing to terms that include marketing, or asking a firm to contact you about offers all count. The TPS stops firms you never invited; it does not withdraw invitations you made yourself. That is done by objecting to the firm directly, covered in the next section.

The second gap is the type of message. The TPS covers live marketing calls. Texts and emails work differently: if organisations want to send marketing electronically, for example by email, text message or some phone calls, e-privacy laws may require them to have your consent⁹. In practice that means the marketing texts you receive are usually there because someone, somewhere, obtained or claimed consent, and the fix is withdrawing it. Claims management companies, which often chase people about mis-sold products or accident claims, are under explicit rules here: they must not send emails or texts unless you have agreed, and they must not make marketing calls to people who have opted out or registered with the TPS¹⁰.

The third gap is geography and honesty. The TPS may not stop overseas calls², because a firm calling from abroad with no UK presence may never check the register. And outright scammers ignore it by design. For those calls the realistic response is reporting, call blocking and hanging up, not registration.

Telling a bank, lender or insurer to stop its marketing

When the caller is a firm you have a relationship with, or one you once agreed to hear from, the tool is not the TPS but your right to object. Under data protection law you have the right to object to organisations using your personal information for sending advertising or marketing via any form of communication targeted at you specifically, whether that is emails, post or calls, and organisations cannot refuse when you object to this direct marketing⁴. This is a right the firm has no discretion over: once you object, the marketing must stop.

The practical route is:

1. Object to the firm directly, in writing, by email or through its preference centre. State that you object to the use of your personal information for direct marketing.
2. Give the firm a chance to put things right. An organisation receiving a data protection complaint has 30 days to acknowledge it, starting the day after it receives it¹¹.
3. If you remain dissatisfied with how the organisation handled your request, you can make a complaint to the ICO, or seek to enforce your rights through the courts⁴.

Two financial rules sit alongside this and shape what firms may send you at all. A firm must not invite or induce a customer to obtain an optional additional product for which a charge will be payable if it knows or has reasonable cause to suspect a contravention of the rules will take place with respect to the product¹². In insurance, a firm should not communicate with a customer of longer tenure in a manner objectively likely to discourage them from shopping around, negotiating the renewal price, or more likely to accept the renewal price¹³. And under the distance marketing rules, a firm must not enforce any obligations under a distance contract against a consumer in the event of an unsolicited supply of services, because the absence of a reply does not constitute consent¹⁴. In plain terms: a firm cannot sell you something you never asked for and then demand payment because you did not say no.

One caution when switching off a bank's messages. Banks send alerts about overdraft use, and a firm must warn a banking customer who chooses not to receive some or all alerts that they will not receive alerts about their overdraft use and may as a result incur avoidable charges¹⁵. The arrangements for opting out of alerts must be easily accessible, free of charge, clear and straightforward¹⁵. So it is worth separating marketing messages, which you can stop outright, from service alerts, which exist to save you money. If you are moving account entirely, the switching your bank account checklist covers the process, and writing an effective complaint helps if the firm ignores your objection.

Pension cold calls are banned, so treat them as a warning sign

One category of unwanted call is not merely against marketing rules but against the law. There is a ban on cold calling in relation to pensions, including emails and text messages¹⁶, which came into force in 2019⁵. The legislation is blunt: a person must not use, or instigate the use of, a public electronic communications service to make unsolicited calls to an individual for the purpose of direct marketing in relation to occupational pension schemes or personal pension schemes, except in narrow circumstances¹⁷. It is illegal to make cold calls in relation to pensions in most circumstances⁸.

The exceptions are narrow and worth knowing, because a legitimate caller will be able to point to one of them⁸:

• the caller is a trustee or manager of a pension scheme, or a firm authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority
• you consented to receiving the calls from the organisation making the call
• you are an existing customer of the organisation, you expect to receive pensions calls from them, and you have been given the chance to withhold your contact details for that purpose

The legislation also permits calls where the recipient has an existing client relationship with the caller on the line, the relationship is such that the recipient might reasonably envisage such calls, and the recipient has been given a simple means of refusing the use of their contact details free of charge, at initial collection and at each subsequent communication¹⁷.

Because the ban is so broad, official guidance treats any pension cold call as a scam signal. Pension Wise's warning is unambiguous:

The same warning appears for people considering taking their whole pot¹⁹, and the FCA adds that you could lose your money and face a large tax bill²⁰. The Pensions Ombudsman, which does not currently use text messaging to contact members of the public, notes that scammers impersonate it too²¹, so a text claiming to be from a pensions body deserves suspicion on its face. If you have already acted on such a call, the pensions guide and the scams and fraud section set out what to do, and the ban means there is something concrete to report: a pension cold call is itself a breach of the law, not just a nuisance.

Reporting nuisance calls, texts and emails to the ICO

The Information Commissioner's Office is the regulator for nuisance marketing. It handles predatory, nuisance marketing calls, and it asks the public to report what they receive: report spam texts, and report cold calls that either played a recorded voice or were from a real person, to help it stop nuisance marketing messages²². The online report takes about 5 minutes²², and you do not have to answer all the questions, though the more information you give, the more useful the report is²². Spam emails are reported the same way: if you have received a spam email, report it to the ICO²³.

What to report, and where:

The ICO uses what you send it to identify, investigate and take action against organisations that are not following the rules around direct marketing²³. Its enforcement is real: it issued over £2.8 million in fines to companies responsible for nuisance calls, texts and emails in 2021/22¹, and it publishes a monthly newsletter highlighting the action it has taken against nuisance marketers¹.

Some areas add local help. In Carmarthenshire, Trading Standards working with Delta Wellbeing are providing free trueCall nuisance call blockers to residents to protect vulnerable people from nuisance and scam calls²⁴. Elsewhere, a council's Trading Standards team is the right place to ask what exists locally, and the free consumer advice guide lists the national services.

If you would rather talk it through, the ICO helpline number is 0303 123 1113, or you can start a live chat⁶. You can also call the helpline on 0303 123 1113 to make a report that way²⁵.

What the ICO can and cannot do with a complaint

It helps to know what happens after you press send, because the ICO's nuisance marketing reports do not work like a complaint to a company. The ICO does not respond to complaints individually, so it is unlikely to contact you about the matter again unless it needs further information for its investigations²². That is not a brush-off: the reports are the raw material for enforcement against the firms behind the calls, and the ICO asks people to use its complaint form because it prompts you for the information it needs²⁶.

For data protection complaints, where you have complained to an organisation first, the picture is different. The law requires the ICO to investigate a data protection complaint to the extent appropriate and to inform the complainant of the outcome²⁶. There are a number of possible outcomes: it may log the complaint, tell you the organisation appears to have complied, tell the organisation to do more work, recommend improvements, or take regulatory action²⁶. If you are unhappy with how the ICO handled your complaint, a reviewing officer looks at how it has handled it and writes to you explaining what they have found within 30 calendar days of a review request²⁶.

The ICO also has thresholds that turn individual reports into action. The current threshold is 12 complaints about an organisation within one month, reviewed quarterly; if an organisation reaches it, the ICO carries out a short, focused review of the available information to understand why, and then reviews the organisation every six months for at least two years²⁶. The ICO may take regulatory action, although it is not able to do so for each individual complaint, and it would not be proportionate to do so²⁶.

There are things the ICO will not touch. It does not handle complaints that are not about data protection issues, that should have gone to another organisation or regulator, or that are solely about an organisation's customer service; where a complaint is about both customer service and a data protection issue, it handles the data protection aspect²⁶. It cannot deal with cases of identity theft²⁸, and it cannot investigate matters of fraud, including deciding whether an account was opened or operated fraudulently²⁹. Complaints that relate only to data protection are better dealt with by the ICO than by the Pensions Ombudsman, and vice versa for disputes about pension administration³⁰.

For a complaint about a bank's handling of a payment or its service, the Financial Ombudsman Service is the destination, and its deadlines are tighter than the ICO's: a business has only 15 days to consider complaints about fraud and scams, payment services such as bank transfers or direct debits, and electronic money, and up to 8 weeks for most other complaints³¹. MoneyHelper gives the same picture for banking: 15 days to investigate and give a final response if the complaint is related to payments, eight weeks for anything else³². If a firm simply does not reply, what to do if a company hasn't replied to your complaint covers the next steps, and if you remain dissatisfied after complaining to an organisation about its use of your data, you can complain to the ICO or enforce your rights through the courts, for which independent legal advice is recommended³³.

Scam calls pretending to be the TPS, a regulator or your bank

The TPS's reputation has made it a target. Scammers phone claiming to be from the Telephone Preference Service and offering to stop nuisance calls, usually for a fee or for bank details. The real TPS is free and never charges, so any call asking for payment or personal information in its name is a scam by definition. The same applies to texts inviting you to reply or click a link to register or re-register.

The pattern repeats across official bodies. Callers impersonating HM Courts and Tribunals Service may ask you to press 1 to speak with an adviser about unpaid fines or police warrants³⁴. Scammers may contact you by email, post or phone call claiming to be from the Payment Systems Regulator, or use the name of an employee, and the PSR asks anyone who receives a suspicious message asking for money to contact it³⁵. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme warns that telephone numbers can be spoofed with fake caller ID, and it has seen a rise in this sort of scam, so a number that looks genuine on screen proves nothing³⁶.

The warning signs are consistent whichever body is being imitated³⁷:

• contacted unexpectedly by a company
• asked for personal or bank information
• not given long to make a decision, or feeling pressured
• asked to pay up front, with only a mobile number and PO box as contact details
• called repeatedly and kept on the phone a long time
• asked to keep quiet about the call

Genuine bodies give you a way to check independently. HMRC states that genuine Self Assessment penalty appeal text messages will not provide any links to websites³⁸. Maternity Allowance messages will never ask you to give, or click a link to give, personal information or financial details by message or email³⁹. The Student Loans Company warns that scam texts and calls are made to look like they come from a trusted organisation and may say a payment has been blocked, that bank details need updating, or an account will be closed unless you act immediately⁷. The safe response to all of these is the same: hang up, find the organisation's number independently, and call back. Never use a number the caller gives you.

If the call claims your account has been hacked or your money is at risk, the bank safe account call scam page explains how that fraud works and what to do, and the wider scams and fraud guide covers reporting a scam that has already cost you money. Scam texts can be forwarded free of charge to 7726⁷, and suspicious messages claiming to be from the PSR can be reported to it directly³⁵.