A US tech provider offering buy- and sell-side firms the ability to record phone calls has teamed up with regulators to push for transcription-based recording rules to improve compliance.
Green Key Technologies is working with the National Futures Association and Commodity Futures Trading Commission to develop phone recording rules that require call transcription, according to Anthony Tassone, the firm’s CEO.
Voice recording has become mandatory under post-crisis regulation in the US under the Dodd-Frank Act to increase transparency and has been established in Europe since 2008.
Tassone told theTRADEnews.com the development of phone recording software, such as that offered by his firm, now enables asset managers and brokers alike to record calls that are automatically transcribed.
This gives compliance personnel the ability to search through a transcription using key words or set up alerts when certain words are used, which correspond to a section of the recording, improving a firm’s ability to ensure staff act legally.
"We are working with regulators to help them understand our voice recording and transcription capabilities," Tassone said.
Tassone said automatic transcription was nearly able to fully record, in text, the contents of a phone call, a goal which it will meet in the near future he said.
He added that advances in technology had reduced the rate of errors when automatically transcribing calls.
"We equip compliance officers with the tools to capture and query voice in real time,” he said. “We can achieve transcription accuracy rates of 99% after proper model calibration."
This calibration includes adjusting the recording software at the firm level to pick up on specific terms, acronyms, and accents, Tassone said.
Under Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act, firms engaged in swaps trading activity must increase record keeping and risk management processes, which extends to the recording of conversations that relate to pre-execution trade information for swaps transactions.
In Europe, call recording began for fixed line phones in 2008 and in 2011 was extended to the recording of mobile calls.