Mobile Recordkeeping Compliance
Organizations in the financial industry in particular (but also insurance, legal, medical, and others) are bound by strict laws regarding the capturing and archiving of all business-related communications. These laws extend to conversations that take place on mobile devices as well, and as the use of mobile devices and third-party messaging apps has proliferated, companies are facing challenges when it comes to ensuring that they are in full compliance with recordkeeping requirements.
Mobile Recordkeeping Compliance Obligations
Each industry and country has their own legislation with specific requirements, but the general consensus is that companies must monitor, capture, and store business-related communications for a defined period of time. The data must be made accessible to regulators or investigators in cases of suspicious activity.
In the financial industry, for example, many of these regulations were put into place following the financial crisis of 2007-08 and regulators have become even more stringent in recent years in order to prevent a repeat occurrence. This means that companies must be diligent about ensuring that they are capturing all communications including those using:
- The company’s email system
- Employees’ private email accounts
- Voice calls
- Third-party messaging apps (i.e. WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.) on company-owned devices
- Third-party messaging apps on employee-owned devices
Key Challenges in Mobile Recordkeeping Compliance
The main challenges that companies are struggling with in order to be fully compliant with mobile recordkeeping requirements include:
- Capturing the full context – conversations that take place over text message or other mobile messaging app can be disjointed with long delays between responses and discussions of other irrelevant subjects interspersed among the business-related messages. There also can be multiple conversations among different participants taking place at the same time. It is a challenge to capture and interpret all of these messages in order to get an accurate picture of the chat flow and the true nature of the conversation.
- Fast-changing regulations – regulatory bodies are continuously monitoring the marketplace and updating their requirements in response to the introduction of new technologies and new modes of communication. The onus is on the company to stay updated and make sure that their compliance procedures are keeping pace with the requirements.
- Legacy systems – companies that invested in compliance systems in the past may find that those systems are not able to keep up with the new requirements. Many of these systems are able to capture email communications or other activities that take place on a networked computer, but are less effective when employees are using mobile devices and third-party apps.
How Companies Can Ensure Full Compliance with Mobile Recordkeeping Regulations
To ensure full compliance, companies must:
- Create a concrete policy that outlines all of the requirements and guidelines that every employee must follow.
- Assign one person (or a team) to have overall responsibility and accountability for the implementation of the compliance policy.
- Train employees on a regular basis to make sure everyone is aware of the rules and procedures to follow.
- Invest in a comprehensive tool that provides an easy and foolproof way to capture and archive all communications, including mobile messages.
How LeapXpert Can Help
LeapXpert provides companies with a comprehensive solution that easily integrates with all of the major third-party apps. Employees can chat with clients using the platform of the client’s choice without having to worry about noncompliance or privacy violations. By automatically capturing communications in line with all relevant regulations, LeapXpert will ensure that its users are in full compliance with all mobile recordkeeping requirements. For more information, book a demo.