Three years after it was first launched, the transcription solution is becoming an essential part of the compliance officer’s toolkit. And it’s partly because of a pandemic.
GuardREC introduced the Automatic Transcription feature in 2019. It offered great value then, but being a machine-learning solution, we expected it would need a little time to fully arrive. Today, in 2022, we can say it has indeed developed into something even more capable than we’d hoped.
What happened?
Since the Corona pandemic broke out, and in turn the advent of the home office, workers have flocked to Microsoft Teams. Thus, Microsoft’s transcription engine has learned a tremendous amount in a short time span.
It grasps not only major languages, but many of the dialects and accents you get in the real-world. And because GuardREC's Automatic Transcription solution is powered by Microsoft, it benefits from any progress made by its parent engine.
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Not long ago we demonstrated Automatic Transcription to a client. They were surprised to see it transcribe marginal dialects with the same precision it did London English, says Sales Director Joachim Thougaard. – It’s a stellar learner, this engine. |
A transcription solution that speaks finance
So far, so good. But what about industry lingo?
No problem. With GuardREC's solution, you can teach the transcription engine how to speak finance, by training it on terms particular to the industry.
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The engine is trainable, which means we can optimize it according to what helps our clients the most, he says. |
It also means individual users’ input is used to improve the engine, to the benefit of the entire community.
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Language, both in finance and in general, is constantly developing. So, we’ve made sure our library does as well. If Bank A captures a new term or word, the central library will be updated accordingly. Which means Bank B’s system will recognise it too, he adds. |
Find potential breaches with ease
Understanding the gist of the conversation is essential, as it enables the perhaps most useful application of the solution. By checking against red flags (as defined by the user), guardREC® Compliance can highlight potential breaches or misconduct.
If the technology behind it is advanced, the practical use is straightforward. You scan for a defined set of words or phrases, and if it’s in the audio, you’ll know it almost instantly. Once the audio is converted to text, query searches require extremely little processing power.
You can now complete tedious compliance work in a jiffy.
The risk-based approach made easy
Joachim reports of overjoyed users who now consider Automatic Transcription an indispensable tool. He says it’s not uncommon to hear things like “This is perfect!” or “We’ve been waiting for this for 20 years”.
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Financial Supervisory Authorities ask us to do more controls. Automatic Transcription makes that possible; it’s the perfect tool for the risk-based approach. You can filter out irrelevant content—such as observations about the weather and current events—and dial in on what really matters, he says. |
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Users love how there’s now a signal amidst the noise. The added speed and precision make it both easier, and arguably more likely, that you uncover potential breaches of compliance, such as insider trading.
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One of our users told me they were able to get 9 hours of audio transcribed in 20 minutes. And this is only the dawn of a new day for compliance officers, Joachim says and smiles. |
Next up: Review queues. Later: The AI-assisted workday
There will always be a manual element to compliance work. But why not let computers do the heavy lifting for you?
GuardREC is working to turn data handling into automatic processes that happen in the background. The goal is to free you up for concentrating on other tasks.
