It’s official, the UK is no longer part of the European Union and the transition period is rapidly coming to a close. What does this mean for data protection? Do businesses still need to comply with the GDPR after December 31st 2020?

For those businesses who operate within the European Economic Area (EEA) and record their phone calls, they must check that their protection of voice data is sufficient for a post-Brexit world. If data is processed in the UK, they must ensure that they have contractual provisions in place to reflect any flow of data between the EEA and the UK. Any preparations need to consider the progress of negotiations that are continuing during this current transition period. GDPR may well remain part of UK law.

What legislation currently applies?

Parliament has passed The Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, which is basically the GDPR but applicable to a UK-only context. This will apply from the end of the transition period. If you’re a business based outside of the UK and offer goods or services to or monitor individuals in the UK this is applicable to you. If you’re a UK business and you’re already compliant with GDPR, and you don’t have any customers or contacts in the EEA, then you’re already sorted…or are you?

Any data protection plans are contingent on an adequacy decision from the European Commission, where the European Commission decides whether the UK offers an adequate level of data protection. With a rewrite of UK data protection laws potentially on the horizon, an adequacy decision could be significantly delayed. If no adequacy decision is made, businesses may need to amend their current contracts in order to continue data transfers. The extra cost of this undertaking could be bad news for small businesses.

What happens after the transition period?

From January 1st 2021, the UK will be deemed a “third country” under the GDPR, which means personal data from the EEA will only be able to be transferred if:

• The European Commission issues an adequacy decision
• Appropriate safeguards are in place
• There is an agreement of approved codes of conduct
• There is certification under an approved certification mechanism together with binding and enforceable commitments on the receiver outside the EEA

If you’re a UK business that receives personal data from contacts in the EEA, you will need to take extra steps to ensure that this data transfer can still go ahead. If you’re a UK business with some form of presence or customers in the EEA, you’ll have to comply with both the UK and EU legislation and may even have to appoint a European Representative. You will need to implement an appropriate mechanism to transfer personal data from the EEA to the UK and any onward transfers to another third country. Several of these mechanisms are already laid out in the GDPR, including standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission (SCCs).

Organisations should be able to continue transferring data from the UK to the EEA, but data protection documentation and contracts will require updating.

Businesses that transfer data from the UK to countries outside the EEA should be able to continue with existing processes for now, but any reforms of UK data protection laws could change that. The really tricky part is transferring to and from the US. This is due to the EU/US ‘Privacy Shield’ agreement being declared invalid by the EU Courts. This means yet more contract updates and appropriate safeguards.

What is Dubber doing to prepare for Brexit?

Dubber already complies with GDPR and will ensure that we continue to do so after the transition period, whether or not the UK is considered an adequate third country.

Let us know if you have any questions about voice data and Brexit.

As business becomes more and more international, the languages used to communicate only become more numerous. This globalised way of operating requires a multilingual approach.

With national economies fluctuating constantly, the dominant languages of business may change – and global companies will need to be prepared. As part of their international expansion, businesses should include language in their strategy.

In the same way that machine translation has improved accessibility online, machine transcription is facilitating global business. The intersection of machine learning and language translation is helping businesses across the world reach new audiences. Part of Dubber’s mission to bring voice AI to everybody is breaking down language barriers and allowing everyone to operate in their preferred language. Offering more languages for transcription helps us better serve businesses who operate globally.Good communication allows people located across the globe to exchange information and ideas and coordinate work and business operations. With remote work the new normal, business in the future may operate from different continents as standard. AI is facilitating this. Research in the US found that the introduction of machine translation increased exports by 10.9% and improved economic efficiency¹.

Speaking your language

Not only is it important that your voice transcription solution supports different languages but also regional variants. While Spanish speakers from around the world might speak the same language on paper, there are many regional differences. Companies who operate in Spanish speaking areas including Puerto Rico and Mexico use Dubber’s services, and are supported by the regional transcription variants that we provide.

In order to offer the broadest possible range of languages to our customer base we use multiple transcription services – adding Google Cloud Speech-to-Text to our arsenal this year. Google and IBM Watson also help us to identify caller sentiment, including tone and emotion.

One of the key advantages of AI transcription is speed: AI can transcribe hours of recordings quickly – work that would take human transcribers days or even years. This makes machine transcription much cheaper than employing a human transcriber, or using the time of your staff to review calls. With voice AI able to detect keywords and analyse the sentiment of a call, the expertise of your employees can be saved for reviewing the tiny sample of calls identified as requiring attention.

1. Regulatory change and political uncertainty

Regulations are continuously changing and, particularly as many financial services organisations operate globally, it can be difficult to make sure that measures are in place to comply with evolving requirements. With Brexit deal negotiations continuing and the exit date rapidly looming, financial institutions who deal with clients in the UK and the EU will be facing uncertainty when it comes to compliance.

Recording information is a key requirement for the majority of financial regulators around the world. There are varying standards depending on the country of operation, such as the US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or the International Financial Reporting Standards, meaning that recording information can use vast amounts of company resources.

The solution to record keeping compliance worries is an agile call capture service with no limits on storage. Financial services organisations can record their calls and store them for as long as they need to – keeping them for 5-7 years to comply with regulations such as MiFID II at no extra cost.

2. Data protection and cybersecurity

With sensitive information being shared with banks every day by customers, data protection is a key challenge for banks. Regulations such as the GDPR can result in fines of up to 4% of annual turnover for firms that fail to comply with data protection laws. Not only is data protection a legal requirement, banks can leverage their information security policies to engender trust in their customers.

Cybersecurity is at the forefront of the minds of risk and compliance managers, as they work to protect the vast amounts of sensitive information that financial institutions process. Further regulations such as PCI DSS and SOX require formal data security policies, communication of data security policies, and consistent enforcement of data security policies.

Advances in cloud technology can really help with the burden of compliance, with secure and geographically redundant data centres ensuring the safe processing and storage of consumer conversations. Data can be encrypted and access can be restricted to reduce risk.

Data also provides a unique opportunity for financial service providers to learn more about their customers and improve products and processes within their organisations. The unstructured data held within customer communications can initially seem inaccessible, but with voice AI it can be transformed into actionable intelligence that can fuel business decisions.

3. Fintech disruptors

Established banks are beginning to feel the threat of newer, more agile players within the financial services industry. The introduction of open banking in the UK has made it even easier for fintech disruptors to lure customers away with easier switching and more competitive offerings. This initiative was introduced by the government to encourage competition in an industry that has previously been dominated by a handful of powerful institutions.

Traditional banks are realising that they will need to innovate, and embrace technology that will allow them to become more agile. This extends to compliance, where technology can facilitate adaptation to changing requirements and create a more proactive approach to risk mitigation. This forward-thinking culture of compliance utilises AI to perform in-depth data analysis to provide insightful reporting that can identify and minimise risky activity. With automated reports and customisable alerts, supervisors and managers can reduce undesirable behaviours without increasing their workloads.

Embracing the potential of technology gives financial institutions the ability to differentiate themselves from the competition and win the trust of their customers by demonstrating their commitment to risk management and data protection.

4. Minimising risk

Regulations put on financial services organisations largely focus on transparency in their aim to increase trust and protect consumers. With adequate data gathering and surveillance capabilities, firms can identify and minimise violations such as insider trading.

A recording solution that can track and timestamp conversations, and allows for quick and easy search and retrieval of information will give firms the upper hand in compliance and risk management. Voice AI that can detect keywords and send tailored alerts to management makes it quicker and easier to detect and deter suspicious trading activities to prevent penalties from regulators.

Talk to a member of the Dubber team to find out how our services can ease the burden of financial compliance.

Regulatory drivers such as MiFID II and the Dodd-Frank Act require the secure and accurate recording and long-term storage of conversations relating to financial transactions. Where once on-premise call recording that captured conversations made on fixed lines in an office were a partial, and expensive, solution to this directive, with many people working from home, they no longer offer full compliance coverage.

While web- and app-based recording may seem like a solution to this problem, these options can come with risks of insecure storage and can’t provide the instant discoverability required by regulators. The only way to record every conversation from a dispersed workforce is to find a solution that can record every call, no matter where it takes place.

Unified Call Recording enables organisations to meet compliance requirements by collecting and storing voice data at scale and across devices and channels. By recording directly from the service provider network, organisations can record calls not just from fixed lines but from mobiles and any IP connected device. It doesn’t matter where in the world employees are working from, the company can rest assured that their conversations will be accurately captured and securely stored in the cloud.

All voice data is protected with AES-256 encryption and is stored in regional data centres for sovereignty. There aren’t any limits on recordings or storage. Businesses can capture as many minutes of calls as they need and store them for as long as their compliance requirements specify. They can even set a limit on their data retention so that recorded calls are automatically deleted. This prevents businesses from holding on to old or outdated data for too long and ensures the information they have is relevant.

Compliance box ticked: what’s next?

Financial services organisations are looking for a solution that will reduce the cost and complexity of meeting compliance requirements. But as well as ticking the box for the compliance basics, they want to go above and beyond to ensure that their organisation is operating effectively.

What if their call recording solution could do more than just capture conversations? What if it used AI to allow a business to conduct its own investigations into employee conduct? What if AI transcribed each and every call, allowing users to search for a recorded conversation by a single word that was spoken?

Automation is the future

When every recorded call is transcribed, there is an accurate record of what was said that can be referred to in the event of an investigation. But this is just the beginning. Transcription can automate processes that can enable a more proactive examination of company practices.

Organisations can identify keywords that indicate policy breaches and create early warning systems through automated alerts for such keywords. Emails can be sent to supervisors to warn of suspicious activity and, through an API, these actions can trigger processes in existing business applications. Transcription also facilitates keyword search, allowing users to find conversations based on a word spoken during a call – just like an email.

Transcribing speech to text also opens up huge opportunities to learn more about an organisation’s customers and also their internal processes. Voice data can be exported to be integrated with other business data to get a 360º view of a company – allowing for analysis within business intelligence tools to identify trends and opportunities for improvement.

Get in touch with a member of the team to find out how financial services organisations are getting the compliance and performance edge with Dubber.

Voice data has been a long ignored or inaccessible pool of business insights critical to addressing compliance, customer experience and business performance. The inability to convert voice-based interactions internally and externally has reduced telecommunication carriers to providing connections. This has precluded them from the data race and using AI to develop new service offerings based on big data sets.

Deloitte found that, in organisations adopting AI, more than 80% of business leaders see AI as “very” or “critically” important to their business success. Some researchers have even predicted that AI could become a “general-purpose technology” – one that will transform every industry and society at large.

The power source of AI is data, and telecommunications service providers have a great opportunity to offer businesses access to this AI fuel. With 92% of all customer interactions happening over the phone, the data being created is vast – but it’s not being used to its full potential. Traditionally, if calls have been recorded at all, the capture of voice data has been limited by on-premise storage. Any data that has been recorded has been siloed and represents only a fraction of the total communications taking place. Not anymore.

Don’t leave voice data out

Businesses surveyed about their AI priorities by PWC stated that their top data challenges were identifying, collecting or aggregating data across their organisation, and integrating AI and analytics systems to gain business insights. Unstructured data, such as recorded calls, was seen as a problem to collect or make sense of. Only 18% of businesses take advantage of this data as part of their AI strategy. This is a significant opportunity for telecommunications service providers to give businesses access to data that has traditionally seemed out of reach.

It is precisely this kind of data that can give a comprehensive view of customers. Executives who say unstructured data is one of the most valuable sources of insights are 24% more likely to have exceeded their business goals, according to a survey by Deloitte. Unfortunately many companies are discovering that understanding customer journeys and making tailored offers is difficult to achieve with traditional premise-based analytics.

Telecommunications service providers have an opportunity to take the conversations happening on their global networks and deliver value from them. Currently telecom networks passively enable the exchange of data, when they could be actively enabling access to the value held within that data. If they don’t act fast, OTT players may make them redundant by building their own networks – Google and Facebook already are.

The call recording backbone for telecommunications

We created Dubber to empower service providers and businesses alike. By recording calls directly on the network, we enable service providers to provide recording and voice AI services for businesses of all sizes. By building our platform in the cloud, we have reduced the cost of data storage by removing the need for expensive proprietary software and hardware.

It’s not just our cloud storage and processing opportunities that make our platform so appealing, but the data modernisation capabilities. We can migrate existing data from on-premise solutions to the cloud to unify the voice data of a business and enable 360^o analysis. Data modernisation offers substantial cost savings. 32% of businesses surveyed by Deloitte identified cost and performance as the top drivers for moving to the cloud, with 91% listing cloud platforms as their primary data storage method. Of the remaining 9% that stored their data on premise, nearly all planned to migrate to the cloud.

Removing the technical barriers to AI insights

Making voice data as accessible as possible is one of our passions. Not only do we democratise call recording through our cloud subscription service, with Dubber AI we also make it easy to extract the data held within calls for analysis. Businesses can easily view call information – including full transcripts, sentiment ratings, and tone analysis – to get a real insight into customer satisfaction.

You don’t need to be an expert in data science. Small businesses will be taking their first steps into the world of data and AI and won’t have the technical skills or budgets required to hire data scientists. With the Dubber platform, they can access easy-to-use services (including ready-to-use Google Data Studio templates) that address these shortfalls: all without having to make big upfront investments. By giving access to AI as a service we’re giving all companies the ability to use it now.

And by partnering with telecommunications service providers around the world to democratise access to voice data, all a business has to do is switch the service on.