- tech360.tv
Google and Symphony Join Forces to Aid Banks in Managing Voice Calls Compliance Risk
Updated: Jan 5
[Edited] Symphony, the markets infrastructure and tech firm, has announced a partnership with Google to enhance its voice analytics offering for banks and investment firms.
This collaboration comes as regulators tighten their grip on communications compliance in the financial industry.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has already imposed over $2 billion in fines for compliance failures, particularly related to the failure to track or record business-related text messages sent over unauthorized platforms during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
As the crackdown on messages and emails intensifies, financial institutions are now preparing for potential investigations into their usage of voice and video calls. It has been revealed that only a fraction of these communications are routinely recorded and retained.
Symphony, which boasts a client base of over 1,000 banks including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, will leverage Google Cloud's generative artificial intelligence platform, Vertex AI, to enhance its Cloud9 voice product. This will involve incorporating more sophisticated speech-to-text and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities.
The Cloud9 product facilitates collaboration among trading teams across various asset classes such as commodities, interest rate swaps, and equity derivatives. With the integration of Google's AI technology, conversations over Cloud9 can be more accurately transcribed for retention purposes and flagged for review when suspicious discussions are detected.
Zac Maufe, Global Head of Regulated Industries at Google Cloud, highlighted the potential of generative AI in transforming the trading landscape. He stated, "Generative AI has the potential to transform the trading landscape from automating routine tasks to identifying potential misconduct through anomalies in data."
In addition to compliance-related transcription and summarization of conversations, users will have the ability to mine the data for additional insights that can influence sales or trading strategies, as well as monitor the overall customer experience.
Brad Levy, CEO of Symphony, expressed his intention to bring the enhanced product to the market by Q2. He described the platform as a tool to extract insights from data, stating, "What we're looking to do is create a platform you would use to put your stream of data in to get the insight out of your data."
Phil Moyer, VP of Google Cloud's Global AI Business, emphasized that the platform would make compliance more "ambient." He highlighted the exponential growth of data, stating, "Data is increasing by as much as 50% to 60% per year. So there's 180 zettabytes of data on the planet Earth right now, 90% of which has been created in the last two years."
Moyer further explained that tools like transformers and generative AI are crucial in managing the massive amount of data being generated, surpassing what humans can handle.
Symphony partners with Google to enhance voice analytics offering for banks and investment firms.
The collaboration aims to address compliance challenges in managing voice calls.
Symphony will utilize Google Cloud's generative AI platform to enhance its Cloud9 voice product.
The integration will enable more accurate transcription and flagging of suspicious discussions.
Users will have the ability to extract additional insights and improve customer experience.
Source: REUTERS