The 2027 wrinkle: NYC SHIELD counts every channel

Nine questions for every vendor sending email or text on your accounts

By the TSI Team

Reg F allows debt collectors, including collection law firms, to contact consumers by email and text, with conditions: a simple opt-out in every electronic message, procedures that keep messages away from third parties, respect for a consumer’s request to stop using a channel, and specific rules for delivering required notices electronically. A creditor with several agencies and law firms should ask each one how it meets those conditions, in writing, before 2027.

Why this is a creditor’s question

Reg F (12 CFR part 1006) took effect in 2021. It governs the collector. But the accounts are yours, the customer is yours, and when a text goes wrong, the complaint names you.

Most creditors place with more than one party. An early-stage agency, a second placement, a law firm for suits. Each one picks its own email platform, its own text vendor and its own opt-out handling. Making them consistent with each other is your job.

And in January, New York City adds a rule that counts contacts across every channel. More on that below.

What Reg F says about electronic communications

The short version, with the sections your counsel will want:

• Every email or text a collector sends must include a clear and conspicuous way for the consumer to opt out of further messages to that address or number (12 CFR 1006.6(e)).
• Reg F sets out procedures a collector can follow for email so the message is unlikely to reach a third party, such as an employer or family member (12 CFR 1006.6(d)(3)).
• A collector can’t contact a consumer through a medium the consumer has asked it to stop using (12 CFR 1006.14(h)).
• The 7-calls-in-7-days presumption applies to telephone calls. Emails and texts sit outside that count, and the general bar on harassment still covers them (12 CFR 1006.14(b)).
• Required disclosures, including the validation notice, can be delivered electronically if the collector follows the rule’s delivery requirements (12 CFR 1006.42).

Law firms that regularly collect consumer debts are debt collectors under the FDCPA, so the same rules reach your collection attorneys.

Nine questions on Reg F electronic communications for every agency and law firm

Send these in writing. Keep the answers in your vendor file.

1. Which channels do you use on our accounts today: email, text, voicemail, portal messages, letters? Which ones will you add in 2027?
2. Where is the opt-out language in each email and text template, and who approved it?
3. When a consumer opts out of email or text, how fast does it stop, and does the stop apply to every template and campaign?
4. Which email procedures do you follow to limit third-party disclosure, and how do you confirm an address belongs to the consumer?
5. If a consumer tells a live agent “don’t text me,” how does that request reach the text platform?
6. Do you deliver the validation notice electronically? If so, which delivery method, and what’s your record that it was delivered?
7. Which third-party vendors send messages for you, and how do you oversee them?
8. What reports can you send us monthly on electronic volume, opt-outs, bounces and complaints?
9. If we move an account to another agency or a law firm, do you pass along channel restrictions and opt-outs with the account?

Question 9 is the one most programs miss. A consumer who opted out of text with your first agency can start getting texts from your law firm, and the consumer won’t care which one sent it.

[Design: render the nine questions as a checklist block.]

The 2027 wrinkle: NYC SHIELD counts every channel

New York City’s SHIELD rule takes effect Jan 1, 2027 (Consumer Finance Monitor, Aug 17, 2026). It caps contact at 3 attempts per account in a rolling 7 days, across all channels, including email and text.

Under Reg F alone, electronic messages sit outside the call-frequency count. For New York City accounts in 2027, each one counts toward the cap. So a creditor with an agency texting and a law firm calling on the same account needs one counter both can see.

We covered SHIELD and two other January dates in more detail here: tsico.com/blog/three-dates-early-2027

Reg F electronic communications: what good answers look like

Good answers are specific. A template ID, a named text platform, a timestamp showing when an opt-out took effect, a monthly report you can put in your oversight file.

Vague answers (“we follow Reg F”) are a finding. Put the follow-up in writing and set a date.

Where TSI fits

TSI’s collections licenses and registrations cover every state that requires them, and TSI is authorized to collect in all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico. TSI is also one of five firms on the US Treasury Bureau of the Fiscal Service private collection agency panel. If you’d like to see how our ARM teams would answer these nine questions for your portfolio, we’ll walk through it with you.

Talk with the TSI ARM team: tsico.com/arm/contact

This post is general information about Regulation F and isn’t legal advice. Talk with your counsel about how it applies to your program.