In an attempt to help regulated financial organisations comply with regulations while supporting remote workforces, the RegTech company of Smarsh has introduced voice recording, transcription and archiving support for Microsoft Teams.

This, according to the tech group, enables firms to do more to meet their obligations to comply and to achieve e-discovery (i.e. obtain evidence in legal proceedings such as litigation or regulatory investigations that is in electronic format).

Financial service firms regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) must comply with voice-recording rules. Firms in the United States are seeing the value of a more comprehensive archive for risk management and workforce analysis.

'Teams' audio files can be transcribed in over 120 languages and regional dialects. Once ingested into Smarsh Connected Archive solutions, content is automatically indexed, stored in immutable format and accessible at any time in a search-ready state. Customers can play back voice calls (including those made within and outside of Teams meetings), and search voice transcriptions and call metadata alongside all of the content within their archive. They can also extend Supervision and Discovery workflows to include Teams voice content.

Adam Miller-Howar of Smarsh told the press: “Expanding the usage of modern collaboration platforms is critical for the productivity of today’s remote workforces and Microsoft Teams is an important leader in that space. We’re enabling [global organisations] to embrace virtual workspaces and instant, multi-modal communications while minimising their risk exposures.”  

Smarsh says that it also captures content in one-to-one chats, multi-party chats and persistent channels. This includes edits, deletes, replies, emojis, GIFs, files, stickers and links.