How Guardian Stockbrokers stays compliant on any device with smartnumbers

Under current legislation, all trading calls between a UK financial services firm and its clients must be recorded and kept for compliance monitoring purposes, including mobile calls. Scotland and London-based firm Guardian Stockbrokers were looking for a compliant mobile call solution that would allow them to maintain seamless business continuity for their call recording, whether on fixed-line or mobile calls.

‘We were looking for a seamless set up that would be quick and efficient,’ explains Guardian Stockbrokers director Atif Latif. ‘Then we were recommended Smartnumbers mobile call recording, and the process of set up took less than 24 hours from start to finish.’

Keeping compliant records of the mobile calls of an entire firm of brokers might seem like a daunting challenge. But now Guardian Stockbrokers have Smartnumbers mobile call recording in place, it could not be more simple – brokers’ business conversations are now automatically recorded via the easy to use service, and securely archived in the cloud-based Smartnumbers vault. The Smartnumbers vault is hosted in the Amazon’s Web Services cloud computing platform to provide scalable storage to rapidly respond to changing business demands and evolving regulatory landscape.

Authorised staff can now access and listen in to all recordings through the simple to use web-based compliance console, which automatically keeps audio data and SMS secure in the cloud for five years, or however long you configure it according to your data retention policies.

Within the compliance console, audio data and SMS are easily searched via metadata, so compliance officers get a real-time view of all fixed-line, mobile and face-to-face recordings across the firm’s estate to help with compliance and quality control.

‘We have got an alternative compliance console,’ says Latif, ‘but the one we use with Smartnumbers is very quick, up-to-date and easy to use, so we find that a better solution than our the current provider.’

For Guardian Stockbrokers, connections are everything – their position as an experts in the market is reliant on being at the centre of the investment community, and this means allowing brokers to maintain these relationships using whatever tools they feel most comfortable.

As well as the ability to store thousands of hours of trading calls, using Smartnumbers mobile plus has given Guardian Stockbrokers the added benefit of a second number on mobile phones to separate out business and personal calls.

This allows the firm to implement a compliant ‘Bring Your Own Device’ policy which ensures only business calls are recorded while personal numbers remain private.

As more financial services firms are required to record a greater number of conversations under MiFID II, they will need the right tools to help them meet their obligations, while keeping their business as agile as they need to be.

Latif says he will continue to explore the additional benefits of Smartnumbers in supporting Guardian Stockbrokers’ long term resilience and agility, so the firm can continue to focus on bringing value to its investment decisions without having to worry about the practicalities of compliant communications.

User-based pricing has allowed Guardian Stockbrokers to keep costs under control and pilot the service with just five users initially, with plans to roll out to the rest of the firm.

‘We’re definitely going to stick with Smartnumbers because these days, given the fact that a lot of communications are now outside the office via email and telephone, it means any correspondence we have is documented,’ says Latif.

‘Functionality-wise, what we are using is only a small amount of what’s available – we plan to spend a bit of time exploring, training our staff on Smartnumbers in-house and implementing it further afield.’