Marketing of 2027 plans began on October 1, the Annual Election Period (AEP) opens on October 15, and most changes in the CY2027 final rule took effect with the October 1 start. This is the first AEP in which agents and plans work under rules removing the 48-hour wait between a scope of appointment and a one-on-one appointment, removing the 12-hour gap between educational and marketing events, and shortening marketing and sales call recording retention from 10 years to six. The rule itself took effect June 1, so the changes reach members in practice over the roughly eight weeks between October 15 and the December 7 deadline, with plan changes taking effect January 1.
What changed since last AEP
Our April article on the final rule lists seven marketing changes in full, and five of them shape how an AEP appointment runs. Agents hold a one-on-one plan discussion right after collecting a scope of appointment. Plans hold educational and marketing events at the same location with no 12-hour buffer, provided beneficiaries receive notice of the transition and a meaningful chance to leave before the marketing portion starts. Agents collect scope of appointment forms at educational events, provided no plan-specific marketing happens during the presentation. The third-party marketing organization disclaimer comes before any plan benefit discussion and no longer within the first 60 seconds of a call. Recordings are kept for six years, and one broker guide reports transcripts replace recordings for years four through six.
Two things stay in place. The general ban on misleading or materially inaccurate communications still applies, which matters because superlatives such as best or top no longer require supporting documentation. CMS also did not finalize the proposed special enrollment period for members whose in-network provider leaves the plan's network, and the agency said future rulemaking will consider options.
What the changes mean for AEP
Shorter waits mean volume at speed. A member who receives a non-renewal notice and calls an agent today reaches a plan discussion in one conversation instead of two, and the displaced member base is large this year, with about 600,000 Humana members and roughly 390,000 UnitedHealthcare members in plans being discontinued, as covered in our look at the 2027 plan files.
For compliance teams, removing the 48-hour wait shifts oversight to the call itself. The waiting period gave plans a built-in checkpoint between the scope of appointment and the conversation, and without the wait, the controls mattering most sit inside the appointment, including when the disclaimer is delivered, how the scope of appointment is documented, and what the recording shows.
Marketing teams gain room in event design and language. Joint educational and marketing events work at a single venue, which turns the notice and the chance to leave into a documented step, and superlatives need no substantiation file, though a claim still has to be accurate when a member or a regulator reads the claim.
Operations teams carry a different load. Six-year retention shrinks storage obligations for recordings, and every retained call stays available for review in an audit or a complaint investigation, so recording quality, indexing, and retrieval speed determine how quickly a plan answers a question about a specific appointment.
The first full AEP under these rules will show which changes moved enrollment, complaints, and call quality, and RISE National 2027 brings leaders from marketing and sales and from compliance and audit readiness together to compare results. The 21st annual conference runs March 16 to 18 at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, now includes the Medicare Marketing & Sales Summit, and spans six tracks across risk adjustment, quality and Stars, compliance and audit readiness, marketing and sales, provider partnerships and value-based care, and operations and strategy. Learn more about RISE National 2027.