While technological advancements have improved the speed and efficiency of electronic trading, the need for communication in the trading industry isn’t likely to diminish soon.
However, the continued reliance on voice-based communication presents significant regulatory challenges for firms in the financial industry. Therefore, trading firms must ensure that their communication systems and practices comply with regulatory standards to avoid potential legal and reputational risks.
In this article, we’ll discuss why compliance is critical for trading communications, ways to strengthen your firm’s compliance, and how Speakerbus’ solutions can help boost compliance.
Why trading compliance is critical for communications
Communications data has a vital role to play in the detection and prosecution of financial crime. In particular, communications data can help firms and regulators spot market abuse, such as insider trading, market manipulation, and unlawful disclosure of inside information.
The development of regulations, such as MiFID II imposes strict protocols for recording, surveillance, and assurance of communications. Hence, firms must ensure that all conversations with employees are recorded and that they can provide insights and prove adherence to communication requirements.
Ways to Strengthen your firm’s voice trading compliance
In today's complex regulatory landscape, various approaches can be taken to enhance trading compliance, and implementing such methods can bring significant benefits to your firm, which we discuss below.
1. Replace traditional on-premise trading platform with a cloud communications solution
By replacing private wires, intercom calls, hoots, and traditional phone calls with a single centralised cloud communications solution, firms can better monitor and record communication data, helping to close compliance gaps while simplifying workflows.
The use of cloud-based solutions can also provide greater flexibility, allowing traders to communicate securely from any location and device while maintaining compliance with data privacy laws.
2. Store communications data in “write once, read many” (WORM) form
Storing trading communications data in WORM form is beneficial for maintaining the integrity and authenticity of communication records. This ensures that data can only be written once and read multiple times, making it tamper-proof and ensuring that the data cannot be altered or deleted after it has been written.
This can also help firms reduce the risk of data breaches and cyber-attacks, ensuring that sensitive communication data is kept secure and confidential.
3. Using AI to identify suspicious activity
Adopting AI-based & machine learning tools to interrogate large data sets and uncover suspicious patterns can improve trading compliance due to their ability to quickly and accurately process vast amounts of data.
However, this technology should only be deployed with the right approach and proper measures to ensure that it doesn’t create unintended consequences or introduce new risks. For example, whilst helpful in identifying potential compliance breaches, AI can also be opaque and difficult to interpret, leading to mistrust among traders and regulators. Therefore, careful consideration should be given to implementing AI-based tools to ensure that they are transparent and accurate for the protection of the company and the financial system.
4. Adopt a holistic, intelligence-monitoring surveillance
A comprehensive approach to intelligence monitoring surveillance that considers all relevant communication channels and data sources can provide a complete picture of potential risks, allowing firms to take timely and appropriate action.
Digitising communications data with solutions like SONANCE - powered by our certified compliance partners gives firms greater visibility and control over their trading communications, leading to better regulatory compliance.
How Speakerbus can help you ensure your firm’s compliance
Speakerbus’ cloud-based digital voice collaboration provides firms with cutting-edge trade communications solutions that ensure seamless processes in and out of the office.
Explore how our digital communication and collaboration solutions can keep your teams connected, compliant, and secure:
QORUS:
QORUS critical communications software enables you to record and capture every call. Alongside certified compliance applications - archive and retrieve data, remotely access calls, and analyse metadata to ensure that you meet regulatory compliance requirements.
CADENCE:
Our cloud communication platform, CADENCE, offers a full suite of communications compliance and analysis capabilities, which automatically monitor and enforce regulatory compliance rules in real time.
SONANCE:
SONANCE helps you simplify and automate critical communications data management processes. Through or best of breed partners clients gain greater visibility and control over your trading communications data by capturing, monitoring, analysing, archiving, and reporting on all your channels.
These solutions also support voice transcription and advanced translation of communications records, further improving your firm’s efficiencies, workflows and compliance.
Summary
As you can see, communications data has a vital role to play in the detection of financial crime, reinforcing the importance for trading firms to comply with regulations and ensure that their trading communications compliance is up to scratch. And whilst there are numerous ways to improve compliance, the importance of cloud-based solutions to help achieve this can’t be underestimated.
If you’d like to learn more about how Speakerbus’ innovative trade communications solutions can help keep you compliant and secure, head to our solutions page or contact us today.
