New regulations come into effect from March 2009 which means that all financial institutions in the UK will be legally obliged to record their telephone conversations and retain the files for at least six months.

The new policy also states that all electronic communication should be stored to include emails, instant messaging and faxing. As yet, mobile phones conversations are not covered, as the technology available to record and store them is new and untested – although this is set to be reviewed in the autumn of 2009.

The FSA originally suggested a three year retention period but settled on the 6 months rule after consulting the industry last year.

The Solution
Ardencom offers call recording solutions and allows companies to record their inbound and outbound calls – with instant access to the recordings via the web. For businesses with very large volumes of calls, Ardencom’s high quality call recording products makes all the benefits of professional, centralised call recording available and affordable to all organisations regardless of size.

The Benefits of Call Recording

• Meet your legal requirements.
• Save scribbling notes, record all those important phone calls.
• Instant access to all your recordings via the web.
• Encrypted call recordings ensure legal compliance.
• Record all calls, a percentage of them or on demand.
• Share call recordings with colleagues.

Good Practise (outlined by the FSA)
Systems are in place to record telephone conversations with customers. Calls are retained for an appropriate period of time as a back-up record of the firm's contact with customers, to assist in dealing with customer complaints, and for training purposes, and are held in a system that can be interrogated effectively.