Audio communications monitoring market to explode by 2020

The amount spent on audio communications monitoring globally is expected to nearly treble from US $795.4 million in 2015, to US $2.145 billion by 2020, according to analysis by Deloitte. By sector, spend on audio monitoring within banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) is expected to jump from US $107.4 million in 2015 to US $309.5 million by 2020. Audio communications monitoring is defined as analysing, either manually or automatically, telephone conversations of sales and transactions performed by regulated companies.

Chris Durrant, a director leading Deloitte’s audio managed service, commented: “The volume of telephone conversations to be monitored will rise exponentially over the next four years. This is due to increased regulation and rule changes moving towards near ‘real time’ monitoring. When implemented, MiFID II will require all telephone conversations to be monitored and potentially retained for up to seven years when institutions deal on their own account and provide client order services.

“Moreover, recent financial scandals mean that regulators expect financial institutions to cover a wider range of market abuse and conduct scenarios. Searching for telephone conversations that warrant investigation can be like the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

Jarrod Haggerty, a partner leading Deloitte’s forensic technology group, said: “It’s not simply a question of employing more people to listen to telephone conversations using headphones, regulated firms should be using audio search and review technology to find key words or phrases. This enables you to quickly and efficiently sift through a greater volume of telephone conversations. The technology will also produce word clouds, theme and sentiment analysis to identify trader ‘banter’ and more colloquial expressions.”

Chris Durrant concluded: “Regulated firms can no longer avoid deploying audio search technology and will need to build-up their surveillance capacity or make use of outsourced monitoring solutions. The time to act on this is now.”

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Notes to editors

The findings were produced in conjunction with MarketsandMarkets, a global market research and consulting company.

About Deloitte
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