Authors:
Dan Klein |
Chilip Lai Director of Business Development and Channels LeapXpert |
This content has been created in partnership with LeapXpert. This is part two of this blog series. Please see here for part one.
A Guide to Compliance in 2024: Leveraging Technology for Compliance
A Guide to Compliance in 2024: Compliance Best Practices for 2024
A Guide to Compliance in 2024: Looking Ahead - Compliance Trends Beyond 2024
A Guide to Compliance in 2024: SteelEye & LeapXpert - The Future-Proof Approach
To avoid regulatory censures and penalties in the year ahead, financial firms need to future-proof their approach to the capture, storage, and monitoring of communications data by using technology to automate these processes. Having a combined solution like LeapXpert and SteelEye to manage communications data delivers a number of benefits, including:
Reduction in complexity and cost of technology management
Elimination of manual data management tasks
Comprehensive communications data capture across various channels
Consolidation of communications data across the enterprise in a single source
Simplification of data governance and data privacy
Streamlined management of regulatory change, including new communication channels requirements
Taking a more strategic approach to communications data capture with LeapXpert greatly enhances the consistency and reliability of those processes, improving the quality of the information. Then, with LeapXpert integrated into SteelEye’s platform, communications data is monitored and analyzed, and is also automatically aligned with the relevant trade data, allowing for instant trade reconstructions. Financial firms see lower levels of false positives and more efficient investigations because of better communications data. Higher quality communications data also means that AI applications that use this information – such as SteelEye’s Compliance CoPilot – will produce even better results.
Of course, enhanced technology alone will not solve all the challenges firms face around communications data capture, storage, and monitoring. Financial services firms need to have the right compliance culture, and should look to build best practices in 2024, including:
Tone at the top – Senior executives and board directors need to set the right example by adhering to rules around the use of communications channels. In some firms, these leaders have been caught using non-compliant apps.
Strong policies – A firm’s policies need to accurately reflect the regulatory obligations it faces, including learnings from enforcement proceedings. Policies also play a vital role in shaping culture.
User experience-focused - Compliance teams should concentrate on user adoption and facilitate the capture of business communication data on both corporate and personal phones to fulfill their recordkeeping requirements.
Robust processes – Compliance teams should automate processes whenever possible to reduce operational risk and compliance risk.
Data orientation – By looking at compliance challenges such as communications through a data lens, firms can reduce costs associated with data storage and processing, and improve data governance.
Adequate training – It is essential that individuals who work in roles where communications will be monitored understand the relevant policies and processes, and what the compliance boundaries are.
Role-based permissions – While it is clear that capital markets teams need to have their communications monitored, consider what other teams the rules might apply to, such as wealth managers and relationship managers, for example.
Regulatory change – It’s important to keep on top of both explicit change, such as new rules, and the kind of implicit change that is often the result of enforcement actions and less formal communications from regulators. Consider how the firm’s policies and processes would adapt.
Remote/hybrid working – Communications solutions should be able to capture, store, and monitor employee use of messaging apps when they are not in the office, too.
Collaboration tools – It’s essential that collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams are also captured in communications programs.
A robust compliance culture, combined with the right approach to communications data and technology, can significantly reduce the likelihood that a firm will face enforcement proceedings from regulators.
Gazing into the future of communications data capture, storage, and monitoring, the one constant will be change. As technology evolves, so too will communications channels, as will the need for them to be made compliant. Recent history has shown that point solutions and manual processes are simply not agile enough to quickly adapt to technology and regulatory change. The WhatsApp enforcement actions have demonstrated the importance of firms being able to proactively bring new communications channels into their compliance framework. As integrated platforms that are focused on data, LeapXpert and SteelEye together enable firms to meet today’s communications challenges and adapt to tomorrow’s communications innovations.
Today, financial services firms face a communications data capture, storage, and monitoring environment that is very challenging. Employees and clients want to be able to use a wider range of channels to conduct business, but the use of these communications channels needs to be compliant with record keeping rules. The point solutions and manual processes that firms used in the past simply cannot keep up with this pace of change, and with evolving regulatory demands. The past few years have witnessed increasing regulatory activity and enforcement action in this space, and it seems likely that these trends will continue into 2024 and beyond. To successfully meet this challenge, firms must take a more strategic approach to communications data compliance, by working with integrated platform solutions such as LeapXpert and SteelEye. With their data orientation and adaptable technology infrastructure, these two platforms together support an agile and future-proof approach to communications data compliance.
Dan Klein
Daniel Klein has over 10 years of experience in helping financial firms find solutions to complex compliance challenges. He is currently the Head of EMEA Sales at SteelEye, a RegTech scale-up that is simplifying compliance surveillance and reporting for financial firms through holistic data management.
Prior to joining SteelEye, Dan spent time at Bloomberg – driving the commercial arm for Bloomberg’s EMEA financial compliance solutions. Before that, Dan was at Smarsh, where he helped establish the firm’s European operations in 2014 as the Head of EMEA. Dan started his career in sales and trading at various investment banks.
Throughout his career, Dan has helped hundreds of regulated financial firms implement compliance solutions to meet regulatory demand. He is highly experienced in developing tailored action plans to meet clients’ unique needs so they can reduce risk and gain value from compliance.
Chilip Lai
Chilip brings more than 20 years of business experience to his role as Director of Business Development and Channels, having worked in the UK, Hong Kong, and across Asia Pacific. He leads LeapXpert’s partnerships with Technology, Software, Consultancies, Regulatory Bodies, and Government.
Along with an extensive background of Sales and Account Management, including working with global organisations such as Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis, and Relativity, Chilip is an original member of the FinTech Association of Hong Kong (FTAHK) Regulatory Technology (RegTech) Committee since 2017. His most recent highlight was participation with Microsoft and KPMG’s RegTech event on “Conduct and consumer protection - LeapXpert” with an invite-only audience of financial services executives.
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