Fonetic Adds Voice Biometrics To Its Award-Winning Dodd-Frank Record Keeping Compliance and Trade Reconstruction Solution

- Banks Can Now Identify and Search for Traders by Voice, Providing More Effective Protection from Rogue Trades and Better Compliance with Dodd-Frank Record Keeping Mandates 

MADRID, Nov. 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Fonetic today announced it has integrated voice biometrics capabilities into its Dodd-Frank Trading Record Keeping Compliance Solution. Fonetic is the first solution provider to utilize voice biometrics to enhance bank compliance with Dodd-Frank Title VII mandates for accurate voice and data record keeping, and as a means for compliance officers to greatly improve risk and fraud detection and prevention.

Fonetic's solution captures, indexes, analyzes and extracts relevant unstructured data from all voice, email and chat interactions to create a fully-searchable database of all communications pertaining to a bank's traders and trades. By adding biometric voice analysis, Fonetic empowers banks to verify a caller's identity, track their interactions, and authenticate transactions based on their unique voiceprint. With even the smallest voice sample, Fonetic can scan millions of calls and cross-match voiceprints with other known criteria – such as call content – to identify the caller. Once identified, the caller's voice becomes searchable data that banks can use to facilitate regulatory inquiries or quickly identify inappropriate trading behaviors.

"Voice recordings play a critical role in helping banks maintain regulatory compliance and protect themselves against risk and fraud, but they become an infinitely more powerful tool when banks can use them to verify who is actually speaking with whom," said Juan Manuel Soto, CEO, Fonetic. "Fonetic's new biometric voice analysis capability helps banks 'connect the dots' between the speaker and their words, which improves communication transparency and increases protection for the organization."

Soto continues, "For banks looking to implement a Dodd-Frank trading record keeping solution before the April 2014 deadline, Fonetic's solution is still the only fully-functioning and proven platform available on the market, and we continue to drive industry innovation by being the first to integrate biometric voice analysis."

Fonetic's voice biometrics capabilities benefit banks in numerous ways, including:

• Trader Identification/Verification: With only a few seconds of conversation, Fonetic can quickly verify a trader's identity. This is very useful to track traders conducting business from phones other than their designated line or traders who try to mask their identity. It can also flag restricted talk among traders or identify who was speaking during conference calls.
• Counterparty Recognition: Fonetic can help banks identify counterparties with whom their traders frequently speak. This could be used to trace deals from a broker's perspective, such as whether the broker has requested several prices from the bank. It can also be used to set up a black list of brokers and traders with whom the bank does not wish to work, and track them even if they switch to a new financial institution.
• Trade Reconstruction: Recognizing the same voice or group of voices in different calls simplifies trade reconstruction. Filtering by voiceprint pairs can help banks find pre-deal, deal and post-deal conversations with the same counterparty or broker independent of the financial institution involved.
• Compliance and Reporting: Identifying and analyzing calls belonging to the same trader and counterparty can be used for statistical reports, such as how long or often traders speak with clients, or to create alerts, such as tracking suspected financial abuse or calls with black-listed traders.

Fonetic's award-winning Trading Record Keeping Compliance Solution was developed in 2009 for Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) to proactively prevent market abuse and adhere to stringent legislation. The solution, also implemented globally by The Santander Group, can monitor communications in up to 79 different languages and dialects, enabling compliance officers to find specific information and reconstruct all interactions associated with a trade in moments.

Fonetic's voice biometrics technology is provided by AGNITIO, the worldwide market leader in voice biometrics solutions for the government and commercial sectors, whose extensive customer base includes police, intelligence, military and other government organizations, as well as banks and financial institutions in more than 35 countries. AGNITIO's sophisticated algorithms allow for more accurate calculations of Likelihood Ratios involved in speaker verification, providing the highest level of accuracy, flexibility, and performance.

About Fonetic
Fonetic helps businesses and institutions get to know and understand their customers better. The company works with major international banks, contact centres and utility companies including Vodafone, Telefonica, Santander, BBVA and Direct Line (Linea Directa). Fonetic brings social media, data analytics, sentiment analysis and unstructured data together into a single multi-channel, multi-language solution that decodes customer behaviour and makes recommendations on how to act. Its Dodd-Frank Record Keeping Compliance Solution is the only linguistic-based solution in the market that enables banks to meet the latest record keeping requirements on derivative and swap trading ahead of the April 2014 compliance deadline.