A worrying 74% of IT and compliance professionals in the US and UK fear their staff might be using unsupervised communication channels – a rise from 66% in 2022. This finding comes from a pioneering survey has been commissioned for Theta Lake, a premier figure in Digital Communications Governance (DCG).
This study furnishes a detailed understanding of the dilemmas and prospects confronted by financial establishments concerning UCC compliance.
In the modern age, defined by the rapid progression of unified communication and collaboration tools (UCC), the significance of digital communications governance is paramount. This has been emphasised further as evolving regulations have resulted in fines surpassing $2.6bn due to shortcomings in recordkeeping.
Theta Lake’s 5th yearly survey, centred solely on global financial services, acquired feedback from an unprecedented 600+ IT and compliance experts from both the US and the UK. The insights from the ‘Theta Lake Digital Communications Governance, Compliance and Security Report’ offer an unrivalled overview of UCC platform utilisation, the obstacles financial service companies face in a UCC-driven workplace, and actionable recommendations for enhancing compliance strategies.
The report’s findings serve to aid institutions in comparing their practices and experiences against the broader sector, pinpointing potential vulnerabilities. Among the noteworthy trends:
- A striking 74% of participants believe their staff might be utilising unsupervised communication channels, an increase from 66% in 2022.
- 68% of organisations admitted to deactivating functions on their sanctioned communication tools to manage issues associated with search visibility, compliance, privacy, and security.
- A vast 78% anticipate that regulatory demands to oversee communications will surge.
- Merely 6% exude confidence in their communication compliance methods, a troubling revelation considering the escalating international sanctions and penalties for failures in communication compliance monitoring.
The primary allure of these innovative collaboration utilities, productivity, suffers when businesses are obligated to postpone rollouts, disable essential functionalities, or even block platforms completely.
Metrigy President and Principal Analyst Irwin Lazar said, “In our research, a significant percentage of companies disable communications and collaboration applications because they lack the ability to ensure compliance. This leads to reduced productivity, and reduced ROI for application investments. By utilizing capabilities provided by vendors like Theta Lake for capture and recordkeeping companies can safely achieve maximum value from their collaboration applications.”
Theta Lake CEO and Co-Founder Devin Redmond voiced his concerns about the existing cycle, stating, “There is a vicious circle for financial services organizations centered around modern communication tools and difficult regulatory compliance capture, record keeping, and monitoring requirements for those communications.
“Basically, the limitations of current compliance tools in addressing the mesh of UCC tools and integrated modalities of text, voice, visual, video, etc., drives disablement of unified communication and collaboration features. That in turn directly results in an increase in the usage of off-channel communications on more feature-rich and easy-to-use unmonitored tools.
“Thus, creating a cycle of more unmonitored communications combined with a negative impact on UCC adoption and ROI. We believe our DCG technology unlocks the full feature sets of UCC in a way that not only drives the competitive ROI and workforce productivity benefits of UCC, but it can also drive engagement with monitored UCC, reduce off-channel communication, and make it easier for compliance teams to prove and improve record keeping, search, and proactive compliance.”
The 2023 report underscores the simplicity of the compliance tool, the consolidation of various communication methods, and the ability to harmonise record capture as major trends.
A prime feature sought after in modern communication recordkeeping, as indicated by this year’s responses, is user-friendliness, followed by secured and customised capture. Theta Lake, boasting an impeccable reputation on Gartner Peer Insights, regularly receives feedback that its easy-to-use and integrated capture spanning diverse communication tools are pivotal reasons for its selection.
For those eager to delve deeper into the 2023/24 Digital Communications Governance, Compliance and Security Report, it is available for download..
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