Communications compliance and archiving is software that keeps a copy of every email, chat, text message and call that a regulated firm's staff send, and checks them for misconduct. It is also called communications surveillance, or e-communications archiving. Its main buyers are banks, stockbrokers, mutual funds and insurers.
Why must these firms keep their messages? Staff in these firms can harm customers or markets with a few words. A dealer can promise a client guaranteed returns. An employee can pass on news about a company before it is public. So regulators require firms to keep a record of what their staff said. In India, SEBI requires stockbrokers to record the orders that clients place by phone, and to keep these recordings. Regulators in other countries have fined large banks heavily for letting staff discuss deals on personal chat apps that nobody archived.
The software does three jobs. First, it captures. It collects messages from email, from the cloud phone system, from approved chat apps and from mobile phones, as soon as they are sent. Second, it stores. It keeps each message in a form that cannot be changed or deleted before the retention period ends. Third, it supervises. It checks every message against rules and AI models that look for risky language.
Here is a typical case. A stockbroking firm in Ahmedabad has 300 dealers who deal with clients by phone, email and chat. One afternoon, a dealer writes to a client in a chat: "Buy this share today, it will double by Diwali, I guarantee it." The supervision rules match the words "guarantee" and "double", so the message goes into a review queue. A compliance officer reads it the next morning, together with the recorded call from the same hour. She confirms that the dealer promised a return, which the rules forbid. She records the case, and the dealer receives a warning and retraining.
Most flagged messages are harmless. A dealer who writes "I can't guarantee anything" also matches the word. So a person reviews each flagged message, much as automated quality assurance in a call centre scores calls for a person to check.
The archive is also evidence. When a court case or a regulator's inquiry begins, a legal hold stops the deletion of the messages concerned. Lawyers then search them with eDiscovery software. Emails reach the archive through the secure email gateway. Calls on staff members' own mobile phones are captured by mobile call recording for compliance.