In the precise world of financial services, compliance with regulatory requirements is a critical component for maintaining trust and integrity. All providers, like investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity companies, are under strict legal obligations to record calls in various jurisdictions like the UK, EU and US. This practice ensures transparency, deters market abuse, and mitigates risk.
However, achieving and maintaining this compliance poses significant challenges, especially in today’s cloud-based multimodal communications environment. This is where call recording solutions like ClarifyGo from Oak Innovation are essential, to provide a complete and consistent solution.
ClarifyGo, a sophisticated call recording solution, addresses the primary concerns of financial institutions regarding compliance. Its features are carefully tailored to meet the stringent requirements of key financial compliance bodies and legislations such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the US, the European Standards and Markets Authority (ESMA), and laws like Dodd-Frank and MiFID II.
Compliantly recording every conversation
The most significant change that was introduced with MiFID II was the need to record all calls associated with a transaction,” explained Oak Innovation product director Richard Garel-Jones.
“This includes internal conversations related to the customer’s instruction.”
One of the critical capabilities of ClarifyGo is its comprehensive recording coverage. Not only is it natively integrated with Teams via the Microsoft Graph Call Recording API, it captures all call types related to transactions – including audio, video, and screens from calls and meetings, regardless of whether they are internal, external, Teams-to-Teams, VoIP, PSTN or mobile calls. This means it is straightforward to audit a complete conversation on demand.
The ease of retrieving recorded calls is another vital feature. ClarifyGo offers multiple filter options for quickly locating calls based on various parameters like date, time, duration, direction and customer phone number. This functionality is invaluable for reference purposes and reconstructing trades, an essential aspect of auditing and dispute resolution.
Data integrity is critical in this of course, and ClarifyGo encrypts all calls to prevent tampering and timestamps recordings for auditing purposes. The solution also complies with GDPR and PCI DSS regulations, ensuring customer data protection and preventing sensitive credit/debit card information from being recorded during transactions.
Secure archiving to satisfy regulators and customers
The data is then securely stored by ClarifyGo, aligning with legal requirements. It offers long-term storage capabilities to ensure compliance with regulations like Dodd-Frank and MiFID II. Additionally, custom retention periods can be set, allowing for automatic deletion of recordings as per organizational policies.
These custom retention policies are highly granular and flexible – and even more so in the latest release. “From January, we’ll extend it to different departments,” explained Garel-Jones. “So where certain teams don’t need to retain internal recordings for 7 years, if they’re not dealing with customers, reducing the retention period will save considerable storage expense.”
Access control and risk management are integral components of ClarifyGo, and outsourcing this compliance aspect ensures managed access with role-based permissions, with total reliability. “Historically, when recording platforms were installed on-premise, it would be the customer’s responsibility to manage the system and detect any downtime,” Garel-Jones pointed out.
“With ClarifyGo being fully cloud-based, we host it, and connect to their Teams tenant all within the safety of the Microsoft network, so there’s nothing they have to look after.”
With detailed access policies ensuring controlled and effective interrogation of the data on demand to complete the picture, ClarifyGo from Oak Innovation presents a comprehensive and secure solution for financial institutions grappling with the complexities of call recording compliance.
Its wide range of features, from capturing all call types to ensuring data security and compliance with international standards, makes it an indispensable tool for financial services firms committed to maintaining the highest standards of operational integrity and regulatory compliance.
Learn more about ClarifyGo’s Compliance Recording for the Finance Sector here.
