Financial sector compliance audit preparedness: Key system requirements
Despite the advent of new and stricter text message archiving and voice call recording requirements from FINRA, SEC, MiFID II, IIROC, and others, it’s still apparent that many financial firms are still naïve about the additional compliance obligations that they must meet to avoid regulatory penalties and even potential suspension.
Recent surveys heavily suggest such a nonchalant approach by many financial firms to compliance. In the 2018 survey by Cappitech, it was revealed that a whopping 65% of companies that are required to comply with MIFID II do not monitor trades systematically according to best execution criteria. In the recent 2018 FINRA Examination Findings Report, it was also noted that in some instances, registered firms did not maintain or implement WSPs, or monitor retail communications, websites, social media accounts, seminars, or external email accounts through which representatives communicated on the firm’s behalf.
According to experts, there are two primary reasons why many financial firms still fail to meet regulatory requirements and therefore face non-compliance charges – either they think the regulations don’t apply to their business, or they think their existing systems are enough to meet the new and revised regulations.
Regardless, the bottom line is this: If the regulator comes knocking and requested for copies of your employee’s communication data, do you know if you can immediately access archived mobile communications without being penalized for late delivery, disparate records, or incurring significant costs for technical and human resource capabilities?
Read on as we detail in this infographic post the top indications a financial company is prepared for a regulatory audit.
1. You Have a Centralized Database for Archived Communications
One of the leading causes of why financial firms fail to deliver curated communication data on time to regulators is that they don’t have a unified database for all their archived communications. As such, they cannot search, locate, and retrieve communications that might be requested by regulators in case they or one their employees is subjected to a lawsuit.
It’s important that your mobile archiving solution does not only capture and record text messages and voice calls but also stores them in the database where you can easily and quickly access them, along with other relevant electronic communication such as emails and chat logs.
2. You Can Capture Voice Calls in High Quality
Most financial firms already have a system in place that can capture voice calls, though not many of these companies ensure that the quality of their captured voice conversations is of high quality.
The audio quality and completeness of the captured voice calls is an area of focus in many regulatory requirements, specifically in MiFID II. According to its call recording requirements, maintaining records of the highest voice quality should be prioritized for firms to be able to detect and deter inappropriate behavior from taking place.
Regulators expect financial firms to archive mobile communications not only to comply with their recordkeeping requirements but also to proactively monitor and alert them when new communication includes vocabulary or behaviour that are deemed suspicious. To do so, your mobile archiving solution should be able to capture phone calls in high quality so you can further process them through speech analytics and speech-to-text tools. Several factors that can influence the quality of a voice call recording; considering them when configuring your mobile archiving solution is critical to as the quality of audio data that it will produce will significantly affect the accuracy and completeness of the transcript of the phone call.
3. Your Mobile Archiving Solution Can Be Integrated to CRM
Being able to provide the regulators with the full context of communications between advisors and the public is crucial in protecting your company from non-compliance violations. One of the ways to do that is by ensuring that your mobile archiving solution can be integrated with your CRM module, so you can view all your employees’ mobile SMS, voice calls, chats, and other communications as part of other engagements and interactions they’ve had with your clients.
4. Your Archiving Database Can Be Accessed By Regulators Remotely and Securely
The last indication that your organization is prepared when requested by regulators to deliver archived trade-related communications is when they can access it without any single data leaving the database. Such capability isn’t utilized yet by many firms as many still rely on an old-fashion methodology of downloading data from disparate data silos onto encrypted hard drives.
That being said, there are now mobile solutions in the market wherein the archived text messages, voice calls, and other forms of electronic communication can be readily and remotely accessed by regulators. These solutions utilize containerized case files within the system, wherein regulators can log-in within a specific time frame, allowing them to review the records instantly and more efficiently.
The TeleMessage Mobile Archiver effectively addresses compliance, regulatory, eDiscovery response requirements and reduces risks across the financial industry. TeleMessage captures and records mobile content, including SMS, MMS, voice calls, social media, and WhatsApp Chats from corporate or BYOD mobile phones, and flags any content or messages that indicate suspicious activities as well. Messages are securely and reliably retained within TeleMessage servers or forwarded to an archiving data storage vendor of your choice.
Our mobile archiving products securely capture content from mobile carriers and mobile devices for a variety of ownership models (BYOD, CYOD, and employer-issued). With our multiple archiving methods, you can always find the right tools or blend for your text message archiving and voice call recording requirements:
TeleMessage offers cross-carrier and international mobile text and calls archiving for Corporate and BYOD phones. Visit our website at www.telemessage.com to learn more about our g and mobile archiving products today.
SOURCE: https://www.telemessage.com/top-indications-that-you-are-prepared-for-a-regulatory-compliance-audit/
