Hearsay Introduces Automated Compliance Solution for Texting
The company is touting it as the “first and only” solution of its kind.
Hearsay Systems on Tuesday launched what it called the “first and only” automated compliance supervision solution specifically for text messaging to proactively protect companies from financial service and telecommunication industry requirements.
The short message service solution for financial advisors “leverages industry-specific keyword lexicons powered by” Hearsay’s next-generation enterprise compliance platform that features a risk meter powered by artificial intelligence, the San Francisco technology firm said.
The new solution is “part of the compliance layer of our platform, which compliance administrators can access via the Hearsay web app solution,” Chris Fernandes, head of legal and compliance for Hearsay Systems, told ThinkAdvisor. Advisors can text clients via the Hearsay mobile app that’s available via Android and iOS devices, he said.
The solution “can be priced separately based on the organization’s specific requirements or part of a larger annual compliance package,” he noted.
The new offering features a set of prebuilt lexicon lists that the firm said “align with firm, industry, and federally mandated advertising regulations.” Intelligent classifiers are used to automatically detect any forbidden keywords in text messages sent by employees, it noted. Any texts that include a match from those lexicon lists are then either blocked or an AI-driven risk alert is created for compliance review, Hearsay said, noting that prevents any advisor or agent from “willingly or unwittingly engaging in unscrupulous practices via text.”
In addition to specific regulatory matches, the pre-built lexicon lists were also developed to “discourage specific behavior patterns that would run afoul” of privacy and consumer protection regulations, including direct solicitation, Hearsay said.
The company’s lexicons are being “continuously enhanced based on thousands of decisions made by compliance officers, enabling texting programs to scale without adding additional headcount,” Hearsay pointed out.
The newest compliance supervision capabilities were developed so that any financial services organization can select what terms it would like to use from Hearsay’s curated Wealth Management, Property & Casualty, and Life Insurance industry lexicons to meet its own organizational risk profile, the firm said. But organizations can also include any additional lexicon terms it wants or use Hearsay’s lexicons to supplement existing lists already set up, the firm said.
Hearsay’s industry-specific lexicons were built on its next-generation compliance platform, it said. Applying the lexicons to texts over its compliance platform, companies can not only block outgoing messages based on rules, but also monitor activities via a universal supervision dashboard that it said includes alerts, internal team notes and text message sampling.
Administrators can view text message attribution so they have a record of who said what, when and to whom, Hearsay noted. In addition to its pre-built industry lexicons, Hearsay has a dedicated compliance advisory practice available to review firms’ existing lexicons and provide recommendations to cover new channels and regulatory needs with more accuracy, it said.
“Compliance is one of the biggest issues for financial services organizations, and as more and more business is conducted via text, it becomes increasingly complex,” according to Fernandes.
Hearsay “recognized this as a problem for our customers and designed our intelligent, modular lexicons to provide a simple, turnkey solution that protects organizations and field representatives alike,” he said in a statement. He added that, as a result, it has “never been easier for advisors and agents to adhere to their respective firms’ texting policies or for firms to protect their brand reputation across all channels.”
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