Reconsider Instant Messaging In Finance

Now is the time for the finance industry to reconsider instant messaging (IM) and see it as a tool to put efficiency and revenue back at the forefront of their communication.

Many firms have a policy prohibiting using IM as a collaboration and sales tool despite potential losses in efficiencies and opportunities.

Cost, reliability, complexity, and above all compliance risk are often cited as the reasons firms avoid using IM. However, recent industry innovations can eliminate or dramatically reduce these concerns.

THE CHALLENGE

Instant messaging has provided many industries with a platform for rapid, convenient, real-time communication that surpasses email.

Since its inception in the 1990s, instant messaging has provided many industries with a platform for rapid, convenient, real-time communication that surpasses email.

Despite its utility, many financial firms have a policy against the use of IM because of a number of limitations and risks:

COST

Many messaging systems do not offer the reliability, security, or compliance functionality that firms require. They also lack integrated compliance and security features, implementation of these can also be expensive.

COMMUNITY

Different IM systems have been adopted over time, as a result of using disparate systems, financial communities are unable to engage in cross industry collaboration.

COMPLIANCE

Legacy IM systems were never designed to have their communications captured and comply with long-established regulations such as those of the SEC, FINRA, CFTC, GDPR, and FCA, as well as newly enacted rules like the EU Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II).

Consequently, to address this design deficit, an IM system must “bolt-on” features to capture its data and make it available to regulatory supervisors, resulting in a complex and risky multivendor IM system.

Firms must pay for their IM data to be delivered to an archiving vendor; however, there is inherent risk of data fidelity loss in both the capture and delivery processes involved.

THE MESSAGING SOLUTION FOR FINANCE

Global Relay Message consolidates all components of a typical multivendor IM system into a single, unified platform, eliminating the risk of data loss and potential compliance issues.

True collaboration within and between financial firms requires a platform that is easily available, affordable, and able to satisfy the reliability, security, and compliance requirements of the finance industry.

Global Relay Message is a messaging platform purpose-built to meet the communication, collaboration, and compliance needs of the finance sector and other heavily regulated industries.

THE GLOBAL RELAY MESSAGE ADVANTAGE

       Integrated archiving & supervision

• Global Relay facilitates intuitive searching and rapid message retrieval, all while providing a full complement of supervision, eDiscovery, analytics, and legal hold tools to help ensure firms adhere to SEC, FINRA, FCA, and other regulatory agency rules.
• Global Relay Message is integrated with the industry leader in enterprise-class archiving technology: Global Relay Archive.
• All communication generated within Global Relay Message is automatically captured, indexed, and stored in a secure, tamperproof cloud repository.

      Global directory

• Through the Global Directory, users can easily find contacts within their own firm and at other firms.
• Users can continually build and customize their contact lists, helping seed a global IM community of finance industry professionals.

      Collaboration

• Global Relay Message facilitates collaboration among users, both within individual firms and across the industry. Through the Global Directory, financial professionals can quickly locate colleagues and start a conversation.

      Cost Reduction

• Compared with in-house multivendor IM implementations, Global Relay Message provides firms with dramatically reduced cost of ownership.
• As an integrated, single-vendor, cloud-based solution, Global Relay Message requires no onsite hardware installation. All hardware and infrastructure reside in Global Relay’s mirrored data centers – with Global Relay assuming all the costs to operate, maintain, and secure them.

       Compliant

• Global Relay provides access to a complete set of monitoring, supervision, recordkeeping, eDiscovery, and analytics tools for Global Relay Message data. These tools help demonstrate that all communication adheres to SEC, FINRA, CFTC, GDPR, MiFID II, and other regulations regarding data retention and supervision.
• Every message from every conversation is securely stored in Global Relay Archive. A complete audit trail is attached to every message, recording exactly who saw it, when it was sent/received, and when it was accessed/reviewed in the Archive.

      Security

• To ensure secure client connection and communication, Global Relay Message combines a secure and private network, end-to-end message encryption, and counterparty authentication.
• Message supports secure login via a Global Relay account password, and it encrypts all messages while in-transit and in Global Relay Archive. User identities are verified by customer directory services integrated with the Global Directory.