Oliver Blower is CEO of VoxSmart.
What were the key theme(s) for your business in 2022?
For us the most notable major regulatory blowup of the year came in September, when 11 Wall Street giants were fined $2billion by the SEC, for not monitoring their employee communications on WhatsApp. The high cost of these fines means that regulators globally are looking at this and rubbing their hands together – which should sound alarm bells for a wide range of financial institutions. The surveillance technology for modern communication channels is there to be utilised, but many banks and asset managers have historically focused a greater proportion of their investment in upgrading front-office technology. 2023 has to be the year that risk management comes to the fore when it comes to decision-making.
What are your expectations for 2023?
A decade-long cost control measure to allow staff to bring their own devices for work communications is being reassessed with risk management in mind. We will be seeing a significant shift back to corporate issued devices in the wake of the $2billion in fines doled out by the SEC to Wall Street giants. However, firms and their staff going forward will need to continue to communicate with clients across numerous channels and ensure that these channels are compliant. This means accounting for the rise in use of instant messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, in business communications.
What trends are getting underway that people may not know about but will be important?
There is still significant risk in OTC FX markets due to the inherent reliance on voice communications, often in a plethora of languages, to agree and book trades. This is the challenge that faces financial institutions trading in global currencies – the ability to efficiently capture and transcribe conversations in multiple languages and accents in real-time to monitor and reconstruct their trades when required to fulfill regulatory and compliance requirements. Moving into the new year, this is where we are expecting to see firms turn to advanced technology, in order to exact more effective risk management in OTC markets.
