TeleWare has announced findings from the first survey of FS organisations following changes to FSA regulations around call recording which came into effect in 2011.

The survey, carried out in association with FStech, highlighted that 29 per cent of firms are not yet or feel they have no need to comply with the regulations and, of the majority that have, a further 53 per cent are meeting compliance by restricting the use of mobile phones within the workplace. “The survey makes interesting reading, especially the fact that a third of all FS firms believe that telling workers not to use mobiles is an effective long term strategy – this seems somewhat misguided,” comments Steve Haworth, CEO , TeleWare. “This position may offer a defensible policy to appease the FSA but is probably not productive or enforceable. The position could potentially result in ‘necessity breaches’ where a travelling trader needs to make a critical call from outside the office environment to conduct a regulated transaction that is not recorded. This will clearly result in an FSA breach and, worse, the breach has been forced on the trader by a lack of mobile recording at a corporate level.”

The survey questioned 100 directors and departmental heads of UK financial institutions and of UK branches of international institutions. Areas of responsibility of those interviewed were infrastructure and technical, risk and compliance. From the 47 per cent that have a solution to meet mobile call recording regulations, around a third still don’t have a fully operational platform. “The bulk of deployments are spread between client-based and SIM- based solutions,” explains Haworth, “However, the client landscape with new versions of Google Android, Apple IOS, Windows and BlackBerry operating systems is like shifting sand – we suspect that many organisations trying to stabilise a call recording solution that needs a software client on each device are struggling to deploy a viable solution,” says Haworth.

TeleWare estimates that it has 61 per cent of the SIM-based call recording market and works through a partner network including BT, Business Systems Ltd and Moberec. Haworth comments: “It is a credit to our customers and those of our competitors that there are financial institutions in the City of London that take regulatory obligations seriously and look to put the relevant solutions in place. Adoption is clearly growing and we welcome this survey which offers an insight into the evolving market.”

The survey can be downloaded at: http://www.teleware.com/pdf/FStech_TeleWare_Dec12.pdf

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