FCA call recording regulations – everything financial firms need to know

Good record keeping is paramount for financial firms. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, many firms weren’t adequately set up for home working. In this extraordinary situation, it took time to put procedures in place to ensure that professional standards were maintained when staff were based outside the office.  

Now that working remotely has become the norm for most office-based roles, the FCA has laid down its expectations for robust record keeping, including call recording. Under the new regulations, firms will need to have the policies, procedures and technology in place to record all relevant communications (including voice calls) when working outside the office. This will help firms to ensure that sensitive information is treated appropriately and crack down on the potential for staff misconduct when working from home. 

What are the FCA call recording regulations? 

The FCA call recording regulations are as follows: 

1. All voice calls must be recorded, including those using mobile phones. So, whether your staff are working at home, travelling for business or office-based, you’ll need to be able to provide recordings of every conversation.  
2. Firms must monitor calls periodically. In addition to having the records in place, you must also listen regularly to ensure the quality of the conversations. 
3. Policies and procedures for remote working must be in place and must be shown to the FCA on request. If you haven’t reviewed your policies and procedures since the first lockdown started, it’s important to check that they’re still fit for purpose and can be applied to home working situations. You might find that you have to add in some wording about the use of privately owned devices or certain apps. 
4. You must offer training to staff on call recording policies and procedures. This will make them aware of the regulations, help them to understand their importance, and outline the consequences if they don’t comply. 

Getting the right call recording technology in place 

Compliance with the FCA regulations is a lot harder if you don’t have the right tech setup. This was the main barrier to most firms when the first lockdown was brought in and the reason why there has been some lenience in enforcing the rules. But the good news is, once you’ve implemented the technology, you’ll benefit from an integrated way of working that’s not only compliant with call recording regulations but also helps your workforce to collaborate remotely and get things done more efficiently. 

Croft’s Unified Communications solution gives all of your communications a home in one place. It’s based on Hosted Telephony, keeping records in the Cloud. So, emails, voice calls, instant messages and more can all be called up from one central record, meaning that there’s a complete file that can be accessed by everyone working on it. It doesn’t matter where you’re based – staff can log in from anywhere, ensuring that your business can continue as usual, whatever external constraints or surprises come your way. If you’re concerned about people outside the company gaining access to your records while staff are working remotely, you can protect the system with authorisation codes. 

Key features: 

• Call recording as standard 
• Records of all incoming, outgoing and missed calls 
• Authorisation codes to protect your data 

Comply with the FCA regulations and support your staff to work remotely. Find out more about our Unified Communications solution or contact us for a free quote today.