The future of remote trading: Recording, regulations and rising compliance

In an unprecedented year for both UK regulated firms and the FCA, 2020 was all about adapting to the new normal, placing pressure on financial firms to recruit contingency planning for remote working amidst the evolving global pandemic.

For many this was somewhat a novelty. Back then, Zoom-bombing dogs were charming, network issues bearable and employees soldiered on 24/7 because everyone believed it would all be over soon. Those were the days!

Keep trading from the kitchen: The new rules and regulations

However, as the great-work-from-home boom explodes and looks set to stay, financial firms in particular face unique and increasing pressures from the FCA to ensure the recording of all communications (including mobile, video and IM) amongst remote workers. Whilst 2020 saw some regulatory leniency on this, latest guidance is that they must update their policies, refresh their training and put in place rigorous oversight reflecting this new environment. Given the FCA's previous messaging regarding its expectations concerning controls in this area, this latest update should come as no surprise and non-compliers can expect severe repercussions.

An opportunity for workplace transformation

The pandemic has been a great opportunity for financial firms to revaluate workplace transformation and eradicate some legacy processes that have been in place for decades. Not only is call recording now critical, but it is being leveraged to foster a much broader sense of digital enablement. This includes using valuable call data to fuel AI and drive differentiation as part of digital transformation, whether it be feeding the data into open APIs for business intelligence or using voice transcription to monitor communications and ensure traders are adhering to compliance rules.  

Compliance recording for financial organisations – You must act now

According to a survey from Enterprise Technology Research, the percentage of workers permanently working from home is expected to double in 2021. Not only this, but in a world of evolving regulation from the likes of MiFID II and Frank Dodd, the need for providers of financial services to keep a secure and accurate record of voice communications is greater than ever. If you haven’t got call recording in place now you should consider it, and if you have, ensure your solution enables you to:

1. Capture every word - The ability to reconstruct a trade or customer transaction is critical, so capturing all voice - irrespective of source - is imperative for detecting unethical practices and ensuring you have that data available for when the regulator calls.
2. Have complete data sovereignty – Using an open platform that allows data to be fed into tools and applications of your choice (i.e. CRM compliance, business intelligence and AI and analytics tools) gives you the ability to retain access, always.
3. Drive compliance assurance – It is imperative that financial services organisations have the confidence and certainty that they are complying with recording requirements, therefore your solution should provide surveillance, risk detection and archiving for voice recordings with sufficient audio quality for replay.
4. Drive efficiency - Automatic speech recognition and transcription technology can be applied to audio capture to extend the analysis of the spoken voice with timely and accurate data, saving time and costs when preparing for the regulator.

Red Box helps over 900 financial organisations of all sizes around the world comply with regulations published by bodies including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which enforce voice recording for record keeping. This includes six of the world’s top banks, 150+ of Tier 2 banks and 85% of Interdealer Brokers.

You can learn more about voice recording solutions for the financial services sector here.