Specialist RegTech provider Shield today announced it has partnered with mobile archiving specialist TeleMessage to enable the direct capture and storage of Mobile and WhatsApp voice and chat messaging. The TeleMessege mobile capture capabilities, coupled with Shield’s comprehensive compliance & surveillance hub are covering a much-needed market and regulatory gap, allowing financial firms to enable their regulated employees to use the native WhatsApp on Apple iOS, Android phones as well as WhatsApp Web and Desktop applications. This functionality enables financial firms to monitor and record relevant messaging by employees using WhatsApp (on both company-owned and BYOD), which is particularly prevalent with the increase of home and remote working during pandemic restrictions.

Shiran Weitzman, Co- founder and CEO of Shield, comments: “WhatsApp provides an easy and secure way of communicating for many traders and bankers who are working from home. However, with its end-to-end encryption it is a big potential headache for compliance teams looking to ensure and demonstrate protection of the firm and its customers from rogue activity. Our partnership with TeleMessage enables the Shield platform to uniquely monitor and record these eComms interactions directly, across all WhatsApp platforms, using the native WhatsApp interface and encryption.”

Whilst some WhatsApp capture tools work with Android or Apple iOS, few cover both, and moreover, can record WhatsApp s calls, along with the commonly used Desktop interface. Using TeleMessage’s technology, the Shield platform incorporates all native WhatsApp capabilities without the need to use additional or specialized versions of WhatsApp, making commissioning quick and simple. To comply with privacy laws such as GDPR, it allows the separation of the business WhatsApp communication, ensuring personal private data is not recorded.  

Once the data has been captured, the Shield platform subjects it to the same rigorous data enrichment, powerful analytics (using NLP and Shield’s unique proprietary technology of Financial Context Recognition - FCR), e-Discovery, and proactive surveillance, as with all the other eComms data.     

Guy Levit, CEO of TeleMessage, also commented on the partnership with Shield: “Shield allows us to enhance our mobile recording products with advanced analytics and surveillance, bringing modern mobile communication to the regulated financial markets. The fast adoption of WhatsApp by financial firms is benefiting the regulated firms, their customers, and employees with efficient modern and friendly communication, and Shield is an important facilitator enabling this digital transformation.“

This functionality provides a pragmatic approach to the challenge of monitoring and recording encrypted eComms such as WhatsApp. Shiran adds: “Global circumstances mean that financial firms can’t avoid the use of the likes of WhatsApp and WeChat during remote and home working, but there are understandable concerns over maintaining regulatory compliance and trust. Working with TeleMessage, our platform expertly incorporates these voice and chat eComms into the overall data management, compliance monitoring and proactive surveillance regime, ensuring they become an integrated part of the wider regulatory compliance process.”

For more details on the Shield platform or to schedule a demo to see it in action, please contact Shield via email: info@shieldfc.com or visit www.shieldfc.com.