What Is Call Recording Assurance?

Alick Smith defines Call Recording Assurance, before stressing its importance and offering some advice. 

Call recording assurance checks that all calls that are required to be recorded for legislation and regulatory purposes are actually recorded.

In addition, having this assurance ensures that financial or trading-based businesses are compliant with call recording regulations and mitigates reputational risk.

Ideally, it also checks whether the media file contains audible content.

Why Is Call Recording Assurance Important?

Call recording assurance gives organisations within regulated industries the ability to know that their contact centre can record calls for that trading day.

It’s important because it means that they are compliant with both their internal processes and their external regulators, avoiding potential fines.

What Are the Risks Associated With Call Recording?

The risks associated with call recording are varied. People might have seen a lot of press about some of the fines that companies have recently had imposed upon them.

But the biggest risk for any financial company is reputational.

When people talk about internal investment, they talk about “how we can make a difference”, but reputational risk, as we’ve seen with banks and with certain airlines of late, is the biggest thing, without a doubt.

When working in an investment bank, reputational risk was everything; there was no return on investment or people saying they could save you X thousand, or X hundred thousand or a million dollars even – that was nothing in comparison to what the reputation of the company is worth.

Reputational risk is the thing that drives call recording compliance. You can use numbers but reputational risk can kill a company very quickly.

How does IR differ?

Call Recording Assurance from IR with Media Integrity acts as valuable insurance, as it ensures that calls are actually being recorded and Media Integrity makes sure they’re clear and audible.

Some vendors have a way of putting in synthetic calls and testing that they have been recorded, but this provides no guarantee for real calls.

Risk mitigation is a serious matter for any organisation, and ensuring call recording compliance is a must for those in regulated industries.

Can you guarantee that all your call recordings are retrievable and audible?