The only things certain in life are death, taxes, and heavy regulations within the financial services industry. Across the globe, the financial sector receives the highest level of regulatory scrutiny and monitoring from governments and private stakeholders, with endless technology and process safeguards in place to protect data and ensure best practices remain intact. The massive shift to remote work, as a result of the COVID-19 public safety protocols, created decentralised work environments which led to significant challenges in financial services organisations adhering to financial regulations. Remote work structures came with the requirement to ensure that the same level of market integrity is preserved. Without face to face or traditional tools readily available to monitor remote, regulated employees, advanced communication and surveillance methods became a necessity.
NICE’s advanced trade and communications recording and surveillance solutions help to fill these compliance gaps. With NICE’s surveillance and the market’s first certified Microsoft Teams recording solutions, remote employees at regulated financial organisations are now able to more effectively communicate and maintain sufficient monitoring and supervision while satisfying compliance obligations.
Enabling Remote Banking Operations While Maintaining Oversight
“The adoption of Microsoft Teams has enabled financial services companies to allow their employees to collaborate better, share ideas, and improve communication while working from anywhere,” explains Lee Garf, General Manager, Financial Markets Compliance, NICE Actimize.
“Traditionally, regulated financial services employees related to trades, equities, stocks, and bonds would need to be in a controlled room within an office, but with the onset of COVID-19 that is no longer feasible”
Regulatory bodies globally often rely on voice recording, so it’s critical that voice communications are captured across diverse platform such as turrets, desk phones, audio/visual collaboration tools like Teams, and mobile devices. As firms adopt methods of communication which provide greater value to remote employees, like Microsoft Teams which combines voice with video, chat and screenshare capabilities in a single, omni-channel platform, it’s essential that all types of messages are reliably captured and analysed – failure to do so can result in millions of dollars of fines and regulatory action. So, when switching to remote structures, it becomes critical that a financial institution’s solution for managing all these different channels remains available and compliant.
“There is significant benefit in an automatic omni-channel capture of communications to make sure firms remain compliant,” says Garf. “The advantage of using a single solution for capturing all modalities is that the data is in one location, making downstream processes like audit and surveillance much easier to manage. For example, it’s common in trading for regulators or a legal team to ask for records to be exported as part of an investigation. It’s very difficult to do that if you have seven different systems managing seven different types of communication. A single best-in-class solution dramatically improves efficiency for everyone involved.”
Verified Global Financial Assurance
By partnering with Microsoft, NICE’s newly certified recording solution gives assurance to customers that they are getting a thoroughly-tested solution that they know will work with Microsoft Teams. The certification means that the solution has gone through scale, security, performance, and functional testing to ensure that this investment will meet compliance needs and expectations.
“We’ve seen more organisations switch to Microsoft Teams, which has shown an eight times increase in volume between January and June, accelerated during the beginning of the pandemic. For firms with regulated employees, they realise the risk of being outside of compliance, and are quick to put a recording solution in place. With our newly certified Teams recording solution, we’ve successfully worked with key customers to deploy a solution which matches their expectations,” added Garf.
Regulatory bodies in the U.S., Europe, and Singapore all require the capture of voice and digital communications, which has created a demand for this approach. With the pandemic dictating new work styles, according to Garf, there has been increased interest in deploying the NICE Microsoft Teams certified recording solution globally. NICE’s cloud deployment capabilities allows it to fulfil the needs of mandated regulations worldwide, quickly. Additionally, NICE’s ability to tailor recording solutions to its customers means they are positioned to deliver recording solutions across the enterprise, including to contact centres where omni-channel recording and surveillance is also necessary. With the backing of Microsoft, NICE is situated to bring standardised monitoring to the UC world.
If you’re looking to succeed in this new compliance landscape, NICE can help. NICE has created a resource center where you can view and download complimentary eBooks, brochures, and on-demand webinars where you can learn more:
- Microsoft’s certified compliance recording solutions can be found at Certified Partners
- Additional resources are also available on the NICE Microsoft Teams Omni-Channel Recording Resource Center
- Register for NICE’s ‘Transforming Communication Compliance’ Webinar Series
