In an era defined by rapid advancements in the use of unified communication and collaboration tools and an evolving regulatory landscape that has led to fines totaling nearly $3 billion for recordkeeping failures, the importance of digital communications governance cannot be overstated. Despite this, new research from Theta Lake reveals that financial institutions still struggle to keep off-channel communications in check.
The company’s fifth annual survey, which included responses from about 600 IT and compliance professionals at financial institutions in the U.S. and UK paints a less-than-rosy picture of how these platforms are being used, as well as the challenges finserv firms are facing.
Here are a few of the report’s key findings:
- Nearly three-quarters (74%) of respondents say it’s likely their employees are using unmonitored communications channels, up from 66% in 2022.
- Two thirds (68%) of firms reported disabling features across their approved communications tools to manage challenges relating to search visibility, compliance, privacy or security.
- Regulatory expectations to monitor communications will increase, according to 78% of financial institutions.
- Only 6% are confident in their approach to communications compliance, a concerning statistic given the increasing global enforcement actions and fines for communications compliance capture and monitoring failures.
“There is a vicious circle for financial services organizations centered around modern communication tools and difficult regulatory compliance capture, record keeping and monitoring requirements for those communications,” Theta Lake CEO and co-founder Devin Redmond said in a news release. “Basically, the limitations of current compliance tools in addressing the mesh of UCC tools and integrated modalities of text, voice, visual, video, etc., drives disablement of unified communication and collaboration features.”
