Financial institutions have suffered an increase in the number of criminal conduct and fraud cases that they must deal with. These have hurt the market, as it reduces the amount of trust investors can place in financial institutions and the compliance processes they employ.
As a result, it has been deemed by many regulators that it is necessary to conduct e-communication surveillance to ensure that investors are protected. The main purpose of these surveillance measures is to ensure that the private or confidential information of investors is not leaked during any e-communication transactions.
The risk of private information being leaked has become increasingly likely due to lockdowns and an increase in working from home. Therefore, to ensure that confidentiality is maintained and that regulatory compliance is followed, employee communications must be monitored. The supervision of employees’ electronic communications is known as e-communication surveillance.
What Kind of Information is Monitored & By Who?
E-communication surveillance must be conducted with certain guidelines being kept in mind. These guidelines are provided by regulatory bodies. Under these guidelines, it is normal practice for the monitoring and surveillance of emails, instant messages, chats, forums, video recordings, audio recordings, and social media feeds. Who does the monitoring? The institutions that are most reliant e communication surveillance to protect confidential data are investment banks, insurance firms, and asset management companies.
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How is E-Communication Surveillance Conducted?
E-communication surveillance can be conducted manually, through automated solutions, or as a combination of both. In today’s time, more and more operations are switching over to automated solutions. This is because manually monitoring large volumes of electronic communications is time-consuming and prone to human errors. Automated software programming allows keywords and phrases to be searched across multiple communication channels. Communication channels include emails, phone calls, chats, text messages, and instant messaging apps, to name a few.
Artificial intelligence plays an important role in helping computers understand human language, allowing for effectiveness and efficiency while operating. Thanks to AI, namely Natural Language Processing, surveillance teams can reduce operational costs without adversely affecting results.
Surveillance vs Employee Privacy: Maintaining A Delicate Balance
While the need to achieve greater transparency in financial regulations is apparent, it must be delicately balanced with the data privacy laws in place. Hence, most regulatory authorities only permit surveillance in a strict framework, designed to elaborate how and when a firm is allowed to survey its employees.
For one, firms must inform their employees when they are being monitored. Furthermore, firms can only monitor an employee when they have a specified and legitimate reason for doing so. Firms must also declare in clear terms to the employee regarding the extent of the surveillance, and how the surveillance data might be used.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that e-communication surveillance in the financial industry is a must. Without it, there is a loss of trust for investors in financial institutions and the financial markets. To prevent fraud and other crimes, e-communication surveillance, especially in its automated form, can help financial institutions protect sensitive data through advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence. However, it is also undebatable that employee data privacy is protected.
As a result, firms must conduct e-communication surveillance upon strict guidelines provided by regulatory bodies, so that the interests of all parties involved can be safeguarded best.
