The deadline for compliance with MiFID II regulations is upon us and the time to adapt to the new rules is now. This extension of MiFID legislation requires any company or employee to record all calls, across mobile and fixed lines, that include financial advice that could lead to a trade. More regulation shouldn’t mean doom and gloom: smart organisations will see these changes as an opportunity to set themselves apart from their competitors with an honest and trustworthy approach to trading and financial advice.

Compliance is an opportunity, not a burden

With technological advances, businesses have the opportunity to make huge improvements in the way they work and the enforcement of MiFID II regulations are the perfect cue to start. By utilising cloud technology to meet the requirements of the new legislation, financial organisations can turn these regulations to their advantage to create value for their business: at an affordable cost, and with no disruption to their existing processes.

Looking beyond the necessary steps required for MiFID II compliance, financial organisations can actually improve their offering and beat the competition by taking advantage of new opportunities. The benefits of a proactive approach to compliance include:

• Improvements in business and customer service practices
• Setting a higher bar for competitors puts businesses ahead of the game
• Gaining a reputation for best-in-class practice
• An opportunity for new technologies to harness the true value of recorded data
• Risk identification and management

Intelligent call recording goes beyond compliance

By deploying call recording for compliance, organisations can also take advantage of the added benefits that can be accessed. Dubber’s call recording is available with the added intelligence of Zoe: a sophisticated suite of speech analytics tools that can help businesses unlock the data held within their voice calls.

Identifying issues and opportunities

Speech intelligence can be instantly added to Dubber’s cloud call recording, allowing organisations to turn MiFID II compliance to their advantage. Zoe can help businesses to analyse their working practices — identifying issues that can be addressed as well as opportunities for development.

Risk management

With Zoe’s Smart Search functionality, recorded calls company-wide can be searched instantly, no matter the size of the organisation. Keywords associated with financial risk can be identified, highlighting conversations that might contain issues. This kind of monitoring promotes a reassuring environment for the consumer.

A competitive advantage

The aim of the MiFID II legislation is for consumers to regain trust in the financial industry, and financial organisations should jump at the chance to showcase how their company goes above and beyond their competitors. By setting a higher bar for financial practice, organisations can get ahead of the game.

A proactive approach to MiFID II regulations

Compliance with regulations shouldn’t be a reactionary game, with organisations playing catch up to attain the minimum requirements to meet regulations. Those who will lead the market will be those who proactively consider how to provide best-in-class practices that offer a better experience for their customers. With MiFID II following so closely behind the original MIFID legislation, MiFID III can’t be too far behind. By taking a proactive approach to customer service and business development, organisations can use technology to their advantage to stay ahead of the game.

The time to adapt to the new MiFID II rules is now. Together with unified telecom services provider Simetric, Dubber has the solution to help financial services organisations comply with the expanded regulations of MiFID II.

Delivered through a SIM card, this advanced communications solution gives users the ability to capture all of their mobile conversations as well as their fixed line calls – a key component of MiFID II compliance. The regulations require all conversations that result or might result in transactions to be recorded, and includes equipment provided to, or authorised for the use of, employees and contractors of the firm – mobile phones being a key example of this clause. This new service will allow users to have a single number across their mobile and fixed line platforms, with Dubber communication capture available across all of their devices.

As MiFID II regulations have extended their coverage to include independent financial advisors, a call-recording solution that can be implemented quickly and easily through a SIM card is an ideal solution. Dubber + Simetric’s call recording solution is cloud-based, enabling users to deploy the service rapidly.

An extra feature of this advanced communications solution is Zoe, Dubber’s powerful speech intelligence suite, which enables users to search through their calls and analyse the voice data that has been captured. Calls related to trades can be quickly located — a crucial component of MiFID II compliance — using a variety of search criteria, but the power of Zoe doesn’t stop there. Zoe’s capabilities are developing every day, and new functionality will allow users to gain valuable insights in a variety of ways from their conversations.

At a time when organisations must be seen to be taking compliance seriously, implementing a comprehensive solution that records communications across devices is an ideal way to ensure your firm is ready for MiFID II. Not only will the worry of compliance be lifted, but consolidating your conversations and using one number for all communications will streamline your workflow.

Used as a new way to deliver unified communications functionality through web and mobile applications, WebRTC has quickly grown in popularity in recent years and is utilised by social platforms such as Facebook and Slack. WebRTC began as a free project that aimed to provide high quality real-time communications (RTC) capabilities between peer-to-peer connections, built into web browsers and mobile applications using simple application programming interfaces (APIs) and a common set of protocols. The growth of the global WebRTC market is expected to be over 40% between 2016 to 2023 (see chart below).

Source: Credence Research

This initiative enables audio, video conferencing, file transfer, instant messaging and also screen sharing without the plugins such as Adobe Flash that have always been required in the past. WebRTC can be seen all over the internet, such as on websites that allow consumers to access contact centre agents through their browser. Live customer assistance can be provided through a chat service or through a WebRTC call that can be placed directly through the browser. It is also what powers calls through instant messaging services such as Slack and enables the voice and video chat that is built in to Facebook’s Messenger.

Previously, this type of plugin-free RTC technology has only been available to large enterprises, as licensing fees for the audio and video technologies required were prohibitively expensive. WebRTC is the first of its kind; allowing a powerful RTC standard to be available to the public as open source. It has the potential to create a new wave of applications and change the way we communicate.

WebRTC runs on JavaScript, which can be easily incorporated into any web application to enable the functionality through a JavaScript API. The services that WebRTC provides can also work simultaneously so that, for example, files can be shared during a teleconference.

Intentionally developed to not provide any preference of protocol, WebRTC is compatible with a variety of existing communications infrastructure such as session initiation protocol (SIP), which is widely used for voice and videoconferencing over IP networks. This means that, just like other VoIP calls, WebRTC calls can be recorded by Dubber’s communication capture software.

What are the advantages of WebRTC?

WebRTC has many advantages, including significantly better video quality than Flash, session connection speeds that are up to 6x faster, and reduced audio and video latency that enables conversations to feel more natural.

Many web services already have RTC capabilities, but only through plugins. WebRTC doesn’t require any plugins and therefore has none of the download, installation, or update processes, or troubleshooting that usually accompany RTC services.

The simple APIs and protocols of WebRTC have the potential to democratise communication across a range of applications from telephony to gaming.

Customer service is an important area of investment for businesses wishing to differentiate themselves from their competitors. With customer contact largely occurring over the phone, the voice data from conversations with customers has become a valuable business asset. Accessing this data to enhance the customer experience can bring numerous benefits. With legacy call recording solutions this data is more difficult to access, however, call recording services built on a cloud infrastructure have the storage and processing capabilities required to truly harness the voice data collected from customer calls. Accompanied by a speech intelligence solution that can analyse the data, a cloud call recording service can allow an organisation to truly listen to its customers. The global speech analytics market has been growing steadily over the past few years and is set to continue, read on to find out how new technology can improve customer service in contact centres.

Quality assurance

Using speech intelligence software such as Zoe from Dubber, contact centre supervisors can monitor their contact centre agents to ensure they are performing to the best of their abilities. Script adherence is important when staff are given directives to do with how to handle certain situations, or when there is a sales campaign in progress. A feature like Keywords can identify those contact centre agents who adhere to scripts, and show calls that do not contain certain words or phrases.

Zoe’s Sentiment feature analyses the emotions of callers using speech characteristics such as tone, volume, and speed of speech and assigns a positive or negative score to a conversation. This allows businesses to identify negative calls that might be from frustrated callers – an automated process could even be enabled to alert management to follow up on negative calls. Trends in negative calls could be identified to show opportunities for development. As Zoe operates in the cloud, and utilises the processing power of AWS, detailed reports can be created using data from all calls rather than a small sample

Dispute resolution and detail confirmation

Recorded calls can provide definitive proof of what was said in a conversation. While this can be useful for everyday business – replaying calls taken on the go to confirm important details back in the office, or replaying orders to ensure accurate fulfillment – recorded calls are also a vital tool in dispute resolution. Zoe’s Smart search feature can easily scan call archives using a variety of criteria from date of call to a specific word or phrase spoken. This quick search means that disputes are settled as soon as possible.

Staff training

Playing real calls is the most effective training method for new staff. The ability to play an example of an actual phone call gives a realistic insight into the conversations a new contact centre employee can expect in their role. Examples of how to deal with angry callers can be played, with proven methods demonstrated.

Recorded calls can also be helpful for existing contact centre staff. An employee’s own conversations can be replayed to show how a call could be handled differently, while successful calls can be shared with a team for motivation. A culture of self-evaluation can also be nurtured by encouraging employees to replay their own calls and reflect on how they dealt with these customers and issues. Dubber’s web portal allows contact centre agents to access their own calls, and team permissions can be set-up so that supervisors can listen to their team’s calls.

Rewarding excellent staff

Zoe can be a great tool for identifying high-performing staff. With Sentiment’s call scoring, contact centre employees who consistently turn negative calls into positive interactions can be easily identified and rewarded for their great work. First call resolution can be tracked and those contact centre agents that achieve high levels can also be acknowledged.

Not all calls are best handled by the person who answers them and knowing when to transfer is a highly valuable skill. Calls transferred to management can be assessed and staff rewarded when appropriate. This variety of measures can indicate those employees who would make good candidates for promotion.

CRM integration and customer insight

Dubber’s partnerships with service providers such as Mondago allow for easy integration with features that can make life easier for contact centre agents. Mondago are leaders in computer telephony and CRM integration and can help organisations build informed profiles of their customers using data from their calls. Features such as screen population, which displays customer information to contact centre agents, can reduce call time as callers no longer need to state all of their details each time they call.

Dubber’s open API allows easy integration with CRM systems. Customer calls can be stored alongside their order history and personal information for detailed customer profiles that facilitate quick and easy customer service.

Deploying a cloud call recording solution, alongside speech intelligence, can not only improve customer service, but provide insight into the working practices of a business and identify areas of potential growth and development. Contact us to find out how to make the most of your phone calls.

Virtual reality (VR) allows you to be transported to real or imagined locations instantly and can connect you to people all over the world. VR users hit 50 million in 2016 and the number of active users of VR is forecast to reach 171 million by 2018. The graph below shows how revenue has grown and is predicted to grow over the next few years. 360-degree video is already available on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook and continued investment from these companies and others including Google and Microsoft mean that VR technology is becoming more affordable every day.

Source: Superdata

The technology is set to transform a number of industries and affect on the way we work and interact with the world and each other. Developments in VR mean that live events such as concerts or sports games can be experienced from your sofa. A global audience can be reached from one venue with the help of a few cameras and some technology. Users can access live streams through VR headsets but also through their browser or mobile app.

A seamless experience

To create a 360-degree video, visual data from multiple cameras must be pieced together to create one video. Post-production of VR content begins with stitching and blending to create one seamless sphere of visual content. VR has continued to improve since its conception and now features immersive effects such as audio that matches the user’s visual experience so accurately that when a user looks away from something, the audio diminishes. Recording using binaural sound is key to this feeling of ‘presence’. For a successful VR experience, and a feeling of true presence, the stitching technology used to create the 360-degree environment must be of a high enough quality to produce a seamless experience.

The future of VR

Tech leaders are predicting that VR will compete with television in the future and are investing in livestreaming services that aim to distribute 360-degree VR content to users around the globe. Just as the internet has changed the way we consume media such as news articles, VR is expected to do the same to television. This entertainment value could be seen as a key area of investment for telcos looking to create a new revenue source after the decline in growth from voice, texts and, most recently, data.

Industry specialists such as CNET founder Halsey Minor believe that VR will be the next stage of growth for the content industry, while Goldman Sachs have stated that VR and AR have the potential to become the next big computing platform. Goldman Sachs have outlined their predictions for VR and AR use in 2025, which can be seen in the graph below. The World Economic Forum sees AR and VR as technologies that can transform daily life with their time and cost saving benefits. This growing industry should be capitalised on by any telco wishing to stay relevant in the future.

Goldman Sachs predictions for VR and AR use in 2025

An example of a telco that is investing in VR is SK Telecom, which is commercialising its 360-degree VR live broadcasting capabilities and planning to open its application programming interface (API) so that individuals and small content developers can create their own 360-degree live VR experiences.

At this stage, the development of VR is very experimental as challenges are identified and overcome. Poor internet speeds can impact the VR experience through heavily compressed images and the strain that VR will put on networks is an area of concern. Network capacity needs to be an area of investment, particularly at the user end of the journey, as VR requires around five times more bandwidth than HDTV as well as the low latency that is essential for a fully immersive experience. If users do not have the correct requirements, content will need to buffer and be stored locally  – creating delays and limiting the interaction capabilities of the VR experience.

The next steps for VR will take the experience mobile. Immersive live VR broadcasting will work in tandem and become more widespread with the development of 5G due to the large bandwidth and low latency that are required for streaming. Network providers will play a key role in the realisation of VR, ensuring high quality connections to allow for a seamless immersive experience.

With the countdown to the MiFID II regulations on the financial sector within the EU continuing apace – we take a look at the APAC call recording regulations that have been put in place since the Global Financial Crisis of 2007.

Eleven members of the G20 summit, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, have committed to a host of regulations for their banks. The aim of these regulations is to improve transparency in the financial industries and reduce risk culture. These measures should restore the trust in investors and consumers that may have been lost in recent years.

With MiFID II mandating the recording of all mobile calls and text messages relating to financial advice and wealth management, it is unsurprising that Asia-Pacific should follow suit with its own extensive regulations.

Burden of proof

Although there is not a cohesive set of compliance guidelines for the region, the unifying theme of the regulations is financial services providers acting in the best interests of their consumers.

The Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) Act introduced by the Australian government, designed to nurture trust in customers and encourage transparency in financial service providers, states that financial advisors must act in the best interests of their clients. Best practice guidelines released by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission describe how records should be kept to show how this is being upheld. In order to comply with these guidelines, all communications with clients will need to be captured and stored securely.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority also requires that institutions selling investment products maintain adequate records to demonstrate that they have advised their clients appropriately – this includes audio recording. Where repeated transactions are requested over the phone, these calls must be recorded to prove that customers are aware of any continued risks before continuing with their investments. Any waivers of risk disclosure should also be recorded as evidence.

Chart from Nielsen Q4 2016 Consumer Confidence Report

Similarly, the Chinese Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests Amendment places the burden of proof on service providers in the event of a dispute. Chinese and Hong Kong banks, are also required to keep records of client communications, including audio recordings, in all derivatives transactions. These must be kept readily accessible for a minimum of five years after the transaction has matured or been terminated. The Nielsen Consumer Confidence Index (see chart above) shows that Chinese consumer confidence has increased in Q4 of 2016, which shows promising signs for the new regulations.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, in its guidelines on risk management practices, states that institutions should maintain records of telephone calls involving trades and discussions with customers on proposed transactions. Transaction information should be stored ‘in a manner that is reasonably practicable to retrieve’ until at least five years after the last date of expiry or termination of a contract. Storage for this length of time tends to be a major challenge for legacy call recording solutions, especially as financial organisations grow. The costs involved can increase dramatically with the storage requirements. With a native cloud solution, scalability is built into the service – allowing organisations to manage their data without any extra hardware.

Chart from World Economic Forum

It’s not all doom and gloom

As regulations and guidelines around financial services tighten to protect taxpayers and consumers, technology providers strive to innovate solutions to help organisations along this road. For instance we have seen solutions such as Dubber working with service providers to provide finance-focused call recording solutions to overcome these challenges.

Solutions such as Dubber’s native cloud call recording will be an instrumental service for organisations wishing to comply with these guidelines. Just like the paper trail of emails, it provides proof that specific information was supplied to a client, ensuring advice was given in their best interest. Not only is the implementation of this service quick and easy, there are numerous commercial benefits that accompany it.

Keeping customer service and user experience at the forefront of your business strategy is vital for success, and there is no reason that this shouldn’t be the case when maintaining compliance with regulations. The systems that have been put in place by financial authorities to maintain consumer interests can actually help banks to identify consumer behaviour patterns that can help them to understand their customers and improve their business.

Safe storage that is easily accessible, is something that you can expect from native cloud solutions. Without the need for any hardware, Dubber can provide long-term secure storage for your calls, which can be accessed in a flash. Solutions such as Dubber’s platform offering, which utilise third party infrastructure as a service solutions such as Amazon Web Services, experience vast benefits such as scalable storage and enhanced cloud security.  Prioritising security is all part of the AWS cloud infrastructure, which is constantly evolving to protect your data.