The growing abundance of mobile messaging platforms being used in the financial sector can make it difficult for companies to stay ahead of fraudsters and on the right side of the law. With SMS text messaging, social media, WhatsApp and other IM apps now enabling financial advisors and broker-dealers to send and share critical business data and customer information instantly, the possibility for an individual within the organization to commit fraudulent activities inconspicuously have significantly increased as well.
In fact, the Financial Industry Regulation Authority (FINRA) has cited fraud as one of their key areas of focus in 2018 – citing inside trading, microcap pump-and-dump schemes, issuer fraud, and Ponzi-type schemes as primary fraudulent activities being executed by some of the member firms and dealers they penalized and suspended for the past recent years.
As a result, financial companies have taken the initiative to strengthen their internal fraud management by investing in enterprise text messaging solutions that can enable them to capture mobile calls and record mobile messages pertinent to their business. In line with that, here are some strategies that your company can implement to maximize this technology in your fraud identification and prevention efforts.
1. Implement a Text Messaging Policy
All employees should be aware and consent to the existing social media and text messaging policies in place which include several clauses of the types of information they are not allowed to disclose via mobile channels.
More importantly, they must be aware of the hefty consequences that come with non-compliance with those policies. If an employee leaves the organization, it is also important for them to understand and consent to non-disclosure terms to ensure they will not disclose any confidential information to other parties.
2. Monitor Employee Conversations
Select communication patterns on text messages, chats, phone calls can be indicative of suspicious activity. For instance, WhatsApp messages with particular words and phrases, or text messaging patterns between two broker-dealers that aren’t necessary to their roles, may suggest fraudulent activity. If the regulators find that your firm have no control systems in place to prevent such behavior, your company will surely face hefty charges and fines for breaching WhatsApp regulations.
In order to execute real-time level of supervision and monitoring, it’s important to have an enterprise platform that can record mobile messages and capture voice calls in their original form, including their metadata. Doing so will enable you to further process such data with analytics and speech recognition software to recognize and evaluate potential unlawful activities being conducted through these mobile communication platforms.
3. Audit and Review the Archives Regularly
A simple step that every financial firm can take to reduce fraud is to regularly review archived messages for any suspicious activity. Aside from copy-pasted messages and alterations to records, another behavior that could be indicative of fraud is when an employee consistently requests and view a particular type of message for longer than necessary or sent or received an excessive number of files from a colleague.
Too many financial companies have not adjusted to the new sources of fraud risks or the modern compliance concerns that accompany the changing communication landscape in the workplace. For compliance officers seeking to navigate the fast-evolving landscape of electronic communication in the financial sector, it is best to have an enterprise-grade text message archiving and call recording solution in place that can capture and record mobile messages, voice calls, chats, email, and other types of mobile content efficiently.
To ensure effective retention and supervision of critical business communications, TeleMessage offers Mobile Archiver solutions for financial firms that need an enterprise-grade messaging app that will enable their advisors to stay productive and their company to stay compliant.
Our Mobile Archiver solutions capture and record mobile content, including SMS, MMS, Calls, and even chat logs from popular apps such as WhatsApp. 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 capture 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.
