Call Recording and Dodd-Frank Act – Things You Need to Know

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When the 2007 financial crisis struck, there was a widespread call for the U.S. government to overhaul the financial regulatory system, which then led to one of the most significant reform overhauls in financial industry – the Dodd-Frank Act.

One of the reforms that Dodd-Frank Act introduced are the call recording regulations. By recording the conversations made within financial companies, the sector can achieve greater accountability and transparency that can potentially prevent another financial crisis from occurring in the future.

The Dodd-Frank act aims to encourage financial stability by increasing the transparency in the system, ending bailouts to protect the taxpayers, ending the ‘too big to fail’ attitude, and protecting consumers from receiving abusive financial advice. The Dodd-Frank act comes with wide-ranging and complex regulations for the financial industry to achieve financial stability in the sector.

The list of restrictions and regulations, and the motives and complications for the companies are similar to the EU’S MiFID II act.

Call recording requirements

For the financial sector in the US to be transparent, the Dodd-Frank act introduced several call record-keeping regulations that apply to most organizations in the financial services industry. The 2007 financial crisis put into light several prominent issues, including the lack of transparency and accountability.

To comply with the Dodd-Frank act’s call recording regulations, companies must keep all communication records made through the telephone, voicemail, email, and others, and these records must be uniformly time stamped.These records must also be stored securely and organized sufficiently to let people have easy access to the information for trade reconstruction.

Legacy archiving solutions are not suitable to meet the requirements needed to comply with the Dodd-Frank act’s call recording regulations as they generate expensive costs for the company, have limited data access, and suffer from being slow to deploy. Legacy archiving hardware is also costly to upgrade and maintain.Financial companies will need to update their archiving solutions to more modern ones that offer rapid deployment, high security, and eDiscovery to achieve compliance with Dodd-Frank act regulations.

Call Recording in the Swaps Market

Even the previously unregulated swaps marketplace is affected by the Dodd-Frank act regulations. The market was left unchecked because the transactions were traditionally arranged over the phone resulting in a lack of transparency. With the new rules, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rule in 2012 that required futures brokers to record phone conversations across both fixed and mobile lines, the market can now be monitored and regulated thoroughly.

As phone calls can be recorded with the right archiving solution, the swaps marketplace could finally be regulated and monitored to deter illicit activities and provide much-needed transparency in the market.

Period of Retention

All call recordings must be retained in secure storage for up to five years after the communication was made.

Complying with Dodd-Frank Act Regulations

It’s impossible to determine which phone call can lead to a transaction, which means that every single phone conversation will need to be recorded and stored securely. Dodd-Frank act regulations mandate the use of WORM or Write Once Read Many storage facilities to store recorded calls while being securely archived for the five years’ retention period.

Since WORM storage facilities are required for the recorded conversations, the electronic records are prohibited from being rewritten or erased for the duration of the retention period.

The TeleMessage Mobile Archiver effectively addresses compliance, regulatory, eDiscovery response requirements and reduces in the financial sector by complying with the Dodd-Frank Act. TeleMessage captures and records mobile content, including SMS, MMS, voice calls, social media, and WhatsApp Chats from corporate or BYOD mobile phones. Messages are securely and reliably retained within TeleMessage servers or forwarded to an archiving data storage vendor of your choice.

Our mobile archiving products securely record content from mobile carriers and mobile devices for a variety of ownership models (BYOD, CYOD, and employer-issued). With our multiple archiving solutions, you can always find the right tools or blend for your requirements:

TeleMessage offers cross-carrier and international mobile text & calls archiving for corporate and BYOD phones. Contact us today to try our mobile archiving products.

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