At the beginning of the pandemic, regulations were eased to help firms stabilise following mass disruption caused by an overnight shift to work from home. Yet, this grace was short lived. Two years on, regulators have resumed clamping down on firms that fail to accurately record and monitor regulated employee communications.
As we grow into working preferences – across the office and home – new ways of communicating are being adopted. Many of us have come to rely on unified communication platforms like Microsoft Teams to stay connected to our colleagues, clients and partners. In fact, Teams now has 270 million active users globally, making it one of the most popular unified communications platforms in the world. Yet, while the multi-modal nature (including voice, video, and chat communications) of these platforms has afforded many benefits at the most disruptive of times, it also introduces complexities when it comes to regulation and compliance.
As such, compliance officers are reassessing the risks surrounding regulated-employee communication (and Microsoft Teams) habits. Under existing regulations, all regulated employee communications must be recorded – something that most legacy compliance recording solutions simply aren’t equipped to do. As such, many compliance officers have been left scrambling for solutions that meet the rigorous requirements of compliance recording. Without the right compliance technology, companies will find themselves vulnerable to reputational damage and fines.
Companies that are rolling out unified communications platforms, like Microsoft Teams, to regulated employees need to remain in compliance with regulations around recording, archiving, and retaining communications. Below are the three necessities of a compliance recording solution that should never be overlooked.
One solution
Firms need one system to record and manage all communications that adapts to all the different ways your regulated employees communicate, whether they’re using unified communications platforms (like Teams, Symphony, Zoom and Cisco Webex), IPC Unigy or other turrets, Cloud9, mobile phones, or PBX (desktop phones).
Additionally, a compliance recording solution should ensure seamless recording, archiving, and retention of regulated employee communications. That could include voice, video, chat, screen sharing, and document sharing – and should be irrespective of where employees are working or the devices/modalities they’re using to communicate.
With one solution for every compliance recording need, your firm can keep overhead costs low and confidently comply with all global regulations around record-keeping, retention and trade reconstruction.
When choosing a compliance recording solution, companies should look to a communication recording and compliance assurance solution that provides complete lifecycle management of data. This reduces compliance risk and saves your firm time by automating processes around compliance assurance and reporting, as well as responding to regulatory requests.
Additionally, a solution with automated recording checks and real-time reconciliation helps your company ensure and prove that data is being captured and retained as required by global regulations. Automated bulk call extraction capability can quickly identify, locate, and download complete conversations for audits, investigations, trade reconstructions, and business intelligence.
Reassessing compliance
As compliance costs grow and regulated organisations cope with the added complexities of remote work, companies are turning to the cloud to power their digital transformation.
Companies need a solution built on a microservice architecture design that provides a secure foundation for firms to scale their recording and compliance assurance capabilities cost effectively and efficiently. With an all-in-one compliance recording solution, you can migrate to the cloud at your own pace.
Having a solution that can be deployed in any configuration to meet your firm’s unique needs is key – whether that’s as an on-premise or hybrid cloud solution, in your own private cloud, or as a pure SaaS (software as a service) solution for added versatility and lower TCO.
As businesses adapt to meet the new communications habits of regulated employees, a re-assessment of compliance risks is needed. The growth of unified communications platforms such as Microsoft Teams – which offer the benefits of improved productivity, digital transformation, and real-time collaboration – means that companies must now have recording technologies to ensure compliance assurance.
These recording technologies must be able to adapt to technology trends, business disruption, and regulatory changes as they happen. In addition, they must help regulated employees stay compliant no matter the situation. If not, companies may find themselves in hot water in years to come.