A2P 10DLC For Insurance Agencies: What You Need To Know, Carrier By Carrier

A2P 10DLC is the registration system U.S. carriers require before a business can text customers from a regular 10-digit number. For insurance agencies, it's mandatory. If you're not registered, your follow-up texts can get filtered or blocked before a lead ever sees them.

Saturday, 8:04 PM. A quote request posts, the first text goes out in seconds, and the carrier drops it. The lead talks to the agency that did reach them and binds there by Monday.

A lot of the time, the lead was fine. Your texts got silently gatekept by the carriers, because your numbers weren't registered under A2P 10DLC, the carrier framework built on CTIA's Messaging Principles and Best Practices.

Texting is how you reach leads now, so when your SMS follow-up gets throttled or dropped at the carrier level, your contact rate drops and nobody tells you.

This guide walks through what A2P 10DLC is, what carriers require, how registration works step by step, and where agencies get tripped up. If you'd rather have the compliance work handled for you, we'll cover that too.

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What Is A2P 10DLC?

A2P 10DLC stands for Application-to-Person 10-Digit Long Code.

• A2P means messages sent from an application or automated system to a person, rather than one human thumb-typing to another. Your CRM firing off a follow-up text is A2P. A producer texting a client from a personal phone falls outside it.

• 10DLC is a standard 10-digit local phone number, the same format your agency already uses, as opposed to a short code or a toll-free number. A2P 10DLC is the framework carriers use to approve and monitor business texting sent over those everyday local numbers.

If your agency sends texts through a CRM, a dialer, or a texting platform, those messages are A2P traffic, and they need to be registered.

Why Carriers Built This System

Carriers built A2P 10DLC to cut down on spam and give legitimate businesses a clear lane. Registration runs through The Campaign Registry (TCR), the central body that vets brands and campaigns for the major U.S. carriers.

When you register, you get a trust score. That score, along with your registered use case, sets your throughput: how many messages per second the carriers will let you send. Higher trust, higher throughput, better delivery. Unregistered or poorly registered traffic gets filtered, throttled, or blocked outright.

Clean registration is what stands between your texts landing and your texts disappearing.

Why Insurance Agencies Need A2P 10DLC Compliance

Insurance runs on speed-to-lead and consistent follow-up, and both of those depend on text. If your messages don't deliver, your whole follow-up engine leaks.

The Business Impact Is Real

Skipping registration, or registering badly, costs you in ways that show up straight in your numbers. Undelivered messages never reach the lead, and there's no bounce-back to tell you. Leads you can't reach by text sit untouched, and contact rates drop across your whole book.

Unregistered traffic also picks up filtering penalties. Once your number gets flagged as spam, that flag can hurt delivery on every text you send after. Each one shows up in contact rate first.

TCPA Rules Keep Moving. 10DLC Doesn't Wait.

The rules around business texting keep moving, and agencies feel it. The way TCPA consent rules apply keeps shifting as courts and the FCC rework them, which is exactly why documenting how you collect opt-in still matters. It's a core part of how conversational AI stays TCPA compliant. In May 2026, the FCC dismissed 11 TCPA-related petitions, then reinstated some previously dismissed ones in August.

Here's the part agencies miss. None of that federal activity changes carrier-level A2P 10DLC enforcement. Registration is a carrier requirement, separate from TCPA, and it's fully in force regardless of how the FCC petitions shake out. You need both: documented consent under TCPA, and registered traffic under A2P 10DLC.

This is compliance territory, so take the conservative position. Treat this guide as operational background and run agency-specific questions past your counsel or compliance review.

What You Need Before You Start

Registration goes faster when you have your details ready. Gather these before you begin.

Business Information

• Your legal business name, matching exactly what's on file with the IRS.

• Your EIN (federal tax ID).

• Your physical business address.

• Your website URL.

• A business phone number and email.

Messaging Details

• A description of your use case (what you'll text leads and clients about).

• Sample messages that reflect what you'll actually send.

• Your opt-in method (how leads consent to receive texts).

• Your opt-out instructions (how they stop, usually "Reply STOP").

SMS Provider Access

You register through an SMS provider. That can be a carrier aggregator like Twilio, Bandwidth, or Sinch, or Mav's insurance messaging platform, which handles the registration and the messaging in one place. Either way, the brand and campaign details above are what feed the registration.

How A2P 10DLC Registration Works: Step by Step

Registration moves through four stages. Here's what each one involves and where agencies should pay attention.

Step 1: Register Your Brand

First you register your brand with The Campaign Registry. This is where your business identity gets verified: legal name, EIN, address, and contact details.

Register through The Campaign Registry or your provider. For agencies, the tip that saves the most rework is simple: make your legal name and EIN match your IRS records character for character. A mismatch here is a common reason a brand gets rejected or scored low, and it's completely avoidable.

Step 2: Register Your Campaign

Once your brand is approved, you register a campaign, which describes the kind of messaging you'll send. Campaigns fall into use-case types like Mixed, Marketing, and Customer Care.

Running a local number per producer? The Agents and Franchises use case exists for that. It costs $30 a month at TCR and gets 60 messages a minute per number on AT&T. It needs AT&T's approval after registration, so confirm with your provider that it fits your setup.

Common insurance use cases include quote follow-up, appointment and renewal reminders, policy servicing, and re-engagement of aged leads. Some of those are transactional, some are promotional, and carriers evaluate them differently, so map each kind of message to its own campaign type.

What you submit for a campaign: a clear use-case description, real sample messages, your opt-in and opt-out language, and how consent is collected. Specific beats generic every time here.

Step 3: Vetting And Trust Score Assignment

After submission, your campaign gets vetted and your brand gets a trust score. That score drives your throughput.

What affects your score: the completeness and accuracy of your brand info, your business's track record and public footprint, and the clarity of your campaign and consent flows.

According to Twilio, a trust score of 75-100 gets 225 messages per second across the three major carriers, 50-74 gets 120, and 1-49 gets 12.

Trust Score	Total Messages Per Second	Per Carrier
75-100	225	75
50-74	120	40
1-49	12	4

If you land low, you can improve it. Tighten your brand accuracy, clean up your campaign description and consent flow, and consider a secondary vet through a third-party evaluator. A secondary (standard) vet runs $41.50 at TCR and can raise your score and throughput.

What Registration Costs in 2026

The Campaign Registry's April 2026 fee schedule lists a $4.50 one-time brand fee, campaign fees of $1.50 to $10 a month for most use cases, and $41.50 for a secondary vet. An enhanced vet runs $101.50.

Your provider adds its own fees on top. On Twilio, each campaign carries a $15 vetting fee, and a standard brand with secondary vetting comes to $46. Other platforms mark fees up or bundle them.

Step 4: Carrier Approval And Activation

Finally, the individual carriers approve your registered campaign and activate it on their networks. Brand approval can come back in minutes, but manual brand reviews can take 7 business days or more.

Twilio currently quotes 10 to 15 days for campaign review, and carrier activation can stretch longer during periods of high volume. Plan for one to three weeks. Once activated, your registered numbers are cleared to send at your assigned throughput.

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After You're Approved

Twilio notes that trust scores are static and don't change automatically over time. Every campaign also carries a 3-month minimum commitment under The Campaign Registry's rules. Keep your sample messages matched to what you actually send, and watch T-Mobile's daily cap as your volume grows.

Carrier Requirements and Throughput Limits

Each of the three majors enforces 10DLC a little differently. Here's where they stand.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile enforces daily message caps tied to your trust score, with bands published by The Campaign Registry.

• Registration required for all A2P traffic on 10DLC numbers

• Per-message carrier fee of $0.0045 outbound on registered traffic (Twilio pricing, October 2026)

• A daily cap per brand, tied to your EIN and shared across every campaign and provider: 2,000 messages a day at a trust score of 1-24, 10,000 at 25-49, 40,000 at 50-74, and 200,000 at 75-100

• Per-campaign fees typically passed through by your provider

AT&T

AT&T ties throughput directly to your trust score tier, so a higher score translates fairly directly into more messages per second on its network. The per-campaign figures below come from The Campaign Registry.

• Registration required through TCR

• Per-message carrier fee of $0.0035 on registered traffic (Twilio pricing, October 2026)

• Per-campaign throughput set by trust score: 4,500 messages a minute at 75-100, 2,400 at 50-74, and 240 at 1-49

Verizon

Verizon hasn't published 10DLC throughput numbers, so match your registered use case to what you actually send.

• Registration required for A2P traffic

• Carrier fee of $0.005 per outbound message on registered traffic (Twilio pricing, October 2026)

What This Means for Your Agency

For a typical agency, these limits rarely bind. Run the math.

Say you buy 500 leads a month and send 3 to 5 texts per lead across your follow-up cadence. That's 1,500 to 2,500 messages a month. That works out to under 100 messages a day, well inside even the lowest T-Mobile daily cap of 2,000.

The throughput ceilings mostly bite very high-volume senders. Sloppy registration gets more agencies filtered than throughput ever does. Get registered cleanly and you're protecting delivery, which is what actually reaches your leads.

Common Pitfalls and How To Avoid Them

Most registration problems trace back to a handful of avoidable mistakes. Here are the ones that trip up agencies most.

• Mismatched business info. The problem: your legal name or EIN doesn't match IRS records, so the brand gets rejected or under-scored. The fix: copy your details straight from your IRS paperwork, exactly as written.

• Vague campaign descriptions. The problem: a description too thin for carriers to understand what you send. The fix: describe your actual messaging in plain, specific terms, including the insurance use case.

• Generic sample messages. The problem: placeholder samples that don't reflect real traffic. The fix: submit the messages you'll actually send, personalization tokens and all.

• Missing or weak consent flows. The problem: no clear record of how leads opt in. The fix: document your opt-in method and make it verifiable, since consent is where TCPA and carrier review overlap. Our guide to text messaging compliance for insurance agents covers the details.

• One campaign for everything, or too many campaigns. The problem: cramming marketing and servicing into one campaign, or fragmenting into dozens. The fix: map campaigns to distinct use cases, keeping marketing and transactional traffic separated.

• Registering with the wrong entity. The problem: registering under a DBA or personal name instead of the legal business. The fix: register the legal entity that matches your EIN.

• Ignoring opt-out compliance. The problem: not honoring STOP requests, which carriers and TCPA both penalize. The fix: process opt-outs automatically and immediately on every campaign.

• Skipping a secondary vet when you need it. The problem: living with a low trust score and throttled delivery. The fix: pay for a secondary vet ($41.50 at TCR) to lift your score when your standard registration comes back weak.

• Waiting until you have a problem. The problem: discovering you're unregistered only after delivery tanks. The fix: register before you scale texting.

Mav Vs. Doing 10DLC Yourself On GoHighLevel, Podium, Or Twilio

Plenty of agencies already send texts through GoHighLevel, Podium, or raw Twilio. Those are capable messaging tools. Here's the part that catches owners off guard: using them doesn't make the A2P 10DLC work go away. It just leaves it on your desk.

With any of those self-serve platforms, you're still the one who completes brand and campaign registration. You own your trust score. You write the compliant sample messages, you set up the opt-in and opt-out handling, and you manage the rejections and carrier fees when something comes back wrong. They give you the pipes. The compliance work stays with you.

Mav is built for insurance, and it folds registration into onboarding so the work stays on our side. Opt-in and opt-out flows and carrier-compliant message formatting are built into every conversation Mav runs, and the campaign structure is set up around insurance use cases from the start. You're not learning The Campaign Registry's rules on a Tuesday night. That work is handled as part of the system.

	GoHighLevel, Podium or Twilio (Self Serve)	Mav
Who completes brand + campaign registration	You submit yourself	Handled by Mav during onboarding
Who owns the trust score and rejections	You own and manage	Managed as part of the system
Opt-in & opt-out handling	You configure and maintain	Built into every conversation
Carrier-compliant message formatting	Your responsibility to get it right	Built in by default
Insurance-specific campaign structure	You design it from generic templates	Structured for insurance from the start
What you manage vs what's handled	Compliance burden stays with your agency	Compliance handled as part of the operating layer

GoHighLevel, Podium, and Twilio are messaging tools, so the registration and compliance load stays with your agency. Mav is an operating layer built for insurance, so that load comes off your team.

Compliance is only useful if your texts actually land. That's why Mav builds it into every conversation.

How Mav Builds Compliance In

Mav handles the pieces that trip up self-registration. Onboarding includes dedicated 10DLC setup, so your brand and campaigns get registered correctly the first time. Opt-in and opt-out flows are built into every conversation, so consent gets captured and STOP gets honored automatically.

DNC scrubs, phone validation, and consent tokens run before the first text goes out. Message formatting follows carrier-compliant standards by default, and your campaign structure is organized around real insurance use cases you can use right away. Mav is also a REACH member.

You can dig into the details in our Compliance Center.

Why This Matters For Your Lead Spend

Clean compliance protects your contact rate. When your traffic is registered correctly, your messages get delivered to leads on every major carrier. That means your follow-up actually reaches people, at speed, every time a lead comes in.

That reliability shows up in results. Agencies using Mav see 30% higher lead conversion on the same lead spend and 24% lower cost per acquisition on paid leads. Delivery that you can count on is a big part of why.

Compliance As Part Of The System

Compliant delivery is wired into how Mav engages, qualifies, and follows up. The New Premium follow-up cadence gives you consistent, carrier-cleared text follow-up on every lead.

Your producers get warm transfers of the prospects who are ready to talk. Mav does the chasing so your licensed agents can do what they do best: advising and closing.

Skip the Headache, Let Mav Handle your TCR

Texting is how you reach leads now, and A2P 10DLC decides whether those texts land. Skip registration and your follow-up leaks silently, draining contact rate across the book. Register cleanly and you protect the whole engine.

You can absolutely handle A2P 10DLC yourself. Register your brand, register your campaigns to the right use cases, keep your details matched to your IRS records, document consent, honor every opt-out, and stay ahead of carrier rules that keep shifting. Done right, it works.

Or you can let Mav handle it as part of the system. Mav builds compliance into every conversation, gets your registration right during onboarding, and keeps your text follow-up delivering across every carrier, so your producers spend their time closing. Agencies using Mav see 50% lower cost of service compared with a call center.

Forget wrestling with The Campaign Registry on your own. Book a demo and let Mav handle it.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What Does A2P 10DLC Stand For?

Application-to-Person 10-Digit Long Code. It's the system carriers use to approve and monitor business texts sent from standard 10-digit local numbers.

Is Registration Required For Insurance Agencies?

Yes. If your agency sends automated or application-based texts to leads and clients, that traffic has to be registered. Unregistered messages get filtered, throttled, or blocked.

Do I Need 10DLC If I Text From A Toll-Free Number Or Short Code?

No. Toll-free numbers and short codes run their own verification and approval programs, separate from 10DLC registration.

Is 10DLC Only For Big Agencies?

No. Any agency sending application-based texts from local numbers registers. Low-volume agencies can use a Low Volume Mixed campaign at $1.50 a month, per The Campaign Registry.

How Long Does Registration Take?

Brand approval can come back in minutes, but manual brand reviews can take 7 business days or more. Twilio currently quotes 10 to 15 days for campaign review. Plan for one to three weeks.

How Much Does 10DLC Registration Cost?

$4.50 one-time brand fee at TCR, $41.50 for a standard secondary vet, $1.50 to $10 a month per campaign for most use cases, plus a $15 campaign vetting fee on Twilio. Your provider may add markup.

What Happens If I Send Texts Without Registering?

Your messages get filtered or blocked at the carrier level, often with no notice to you. Your number can get flagged as spam, which can hurt delivery going forward.

How Does A2P 10DLC Relate To TCPA?

They're separate. TCPA governs consent to contact people; A2P 10DLC is a carrier registration requirement. You need documented consent under TCPA and registered traffic under A2P 10DLC.

What Is A Trust Score?

A rating assigned during vetting that reflects how trustworthy your registered traffic is. It sets your throughput, so a higher score means better delivery and more messages per second.

Can I Use The Same Registration For Multiple Phone Numbers?

Yes. You can associate multiple numbers with a registered campaign, so your team can send from several numbers under one approved registration.

Can I Register On My Own?

Yes. You can register directly through a provider like Twilio, Bandwidth, or Sinch. It's doable, but the registration, trust score, and ongoing compliance are all on you.

Do I Still Have To Register For A2P 10DLC If I Use GoHighLevel, Podium, Or Twilio?

Yes. Those platforms still require you to register your brand and campaigns and own your compliance and trust score. Mav is different: it handles registration during onboarding and builds compliance into every conversation.

Do I Need Separate Campaigns For Marketing And Transactional Texts?

Generally yes. Carriers evaluate promotional and transactional messaging differently, so mapping them to separate campaigns keeps your delivery clean and your registration accurate.

Last Updated: October 16 2026