The Single Pane of Glass Approach Towards Streamlining Compliant Communications

How we communicate and collaborate, both in and out of the office, has fundamentally shifted in recent years.  

Even in the most disciplined organizations, platforms like Slack and Teams, and instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, form a complex web of comms channels.  

For regulated financial service organizations, this digital diffusion presents a significant compliance challenge. While communication both accelerates and proliferates, effective supervision and audit of these channels can lag behind, creating fragmented oversight and exposing firms to substantial and avoidable punitive risk. 

Directives like the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) and the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) impose stringent requirements for recording and monitoring communications that could lead to transactions or constitute market abuse.

Clear dangers, unclear solutions 

While the compliance obligations are clearly defined, many organizations find that practical solutions are not. Compliance teams find themselves switching between different platforms to review emails, then separate tools for collaboration chats, and perhaps another for simple voice comms.  

This fragmented approach is increasingly untenable in the face of evolving regulations and the sheer volume and velocity of digital interactions. It creates blind spots, delays investigations, and makes comprehensive audits a Herculean task. 

It’s been made clear that the burden of both maintaining compliance and understanding what that even means in the digital age both fall squarely on the firms themselves. In March 2023, US Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr told the American National Institute on White Collar Crime: 

“…if a company has not produced communications from these third-party messaging applications, our prosecutors will not accept that at face value. They’ll ask about the company’s ability to access such communications, whether they are stored on corporate devices or servers, as well as applicable privacy and local laws, among other things. A company’s answers—or lack of answers—may very well affect the offer it receives to resolve criminal liability.” 

The fines imposed to “resolve criminal liability” are intentionally severe. The industry has seen multi-billion-euro fines against major financial institutions for failures in capturing communications on unauthorized channels like WhatsApp –  a warning that regulators expect all business communications, regardless of the platform, to be accessible and supervised.  

Within the EU, NCAs like Germany's BaFin or France's AMF are focused on ensuring firms meet their obligations under MiFID II and MAR, but aren’t very forthcoming with before-the-fact guidance on what the latest instant messaging pitfalls actually are.  

Failure to accurately predict these emergent hazards not only risks hefty financial penalties but also significant reputational damage and erosion of client trust. 

The ideal solution that industry experts are working towards is a unified, holistic view, often termed the "Single Pane of Glass" (SPoG) approach to compliant communications. 

What is the Single Pane of Glass? 

The ‘Single Pane of Glass’ (SPoG) refers to the total simplification and streamlining of all sources of business communication (from voice to SMS to email, Teams, Slack, Zoom, WhatsApp, etc.) so it can all be conducted, recorded and audited via a single ‘glass’ screen, be that a desktop computer or a mobile app.    

Instead of logging into multiple systems across devices, compliant professionals would be able to view, search, analyze, and supervise all relevant employee communications in one place, ideally in real-time. The goal of this consolidation is to provide complete transparency and control, enabling efficient, effective, and proactive meeting of even the most complex regulatory demands. 

Is there a universal SPoG?  

Unfortunately, the short answer is generally no. This is due to the sheer variety of platforms and channels. By the time you’ve finished reading this article, there’s likely to be an entirely new social media platform that you’re now too old to be invited to  – but still poses a real compliance risk if it’s ever used to transmit protected communications.  

Despite the proliferation and ever-expanding variety of communication channels, firms can still pursue SPoG integration with the most popular and operationally pertinent platforms, such as Teams and WhatsApp, to great effect. 

The Power of One 

Pursuing a SPoG strategy offers tangible advantages for firms navigating international regulatory environments. Using the EU jurisdiction as an example, these advantages include: 

Enhanced adherence 
Greater system unification makes it significantly easier to demonstrate compliance with MiFID II record-keeping requirements (Article 16-7) and MAR surveillance obligations. It ensures relevant comms capture and retention, and simplifies responding to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) or European Banking Authority (EBA) when they have questions.  

Proactive mitigation  
Modern SPoG solutions typically incorporate sophisticated AI and machine learning capabilities designed to automatically flag non-compliant language, suspicious behavior, or breaches of conduct rules across all monitored channels simultaneously. This proactive stance is crucial for preventing violations before they escalate, moving beyond simple keyword matching to understanding context and tone. 

Streamlined audits  
When internal or external auditors make requests, fragmented systems turn compliance into, at best, a time-sink and, at worst, a serious pecuniary risk. A unified platform allows for rapid, comprehensive searches across all channels and users, drastically reducing the time needed to respond to regulatory inquiries or conduct internal investigations. Being able to demonstrate speed and diligence can be critical to maintain a positive working relationship with regulatory authorities. 

Operational efficiency 
Industry reports have shown that compliance teams will spend up to 12 work hours per week simply trying to navigate disparate monitoring tools. A SPoG eliminates this inefficiency, freeing up valuable resources lost to manual data wrangling. 

What to look for in a SPoG solution  

Not all Panes of Glass are created equal. To deliver value and effective cover, especially within the EU context, a solution must go beyond simple aggregation. Look for these key capabilities: 

• Relevant coverage 
  Ensure the platform captures all channels your employees use for business, including email, major collaboration suites and messaging apps plus voice, and relevant social media. Consider specific regional preferences, such as the EU being more invested in WhatsApp and Teams  – as compared to WeChat in China or KakaoTalk in Korea.  

• Automation 
  Leverage AI for advanced surveillance, such as detecting nuanced risks, reducing false positives through contextual analysis, identifying anomalies, and adapting to evolving regulatory focuses. 

• Search & reporting 
  Any recording platform is only as good as its ability toreproduce those recordings. Solutions need powerful, intuitive search capabilities across all data and secure retention per MiFID II, and flexible reporting tools suitable for regulatory submissions and internal reviews.  

• Scalability 
  A solution needs to integrate smoothly with your existing IT infrastructure (e.g., your archiving systems or HR platform) and be able scale with data volumes and evolving business needs. Crucially for the EU, organizations must consider data residency options in order to comply with GDPR and data sovereignty requirements. 

 A Unified Future with 1GLOBAL 

To empower financial institutions to navigate compliance regulations with an intuitive, streamlined workflow, 1GLOBAL launched Message+. This powerful solution follows the SPoG design philosophy and is specifically designed to embed compliant SMS and WhatsApp capture directly within the familiar Microsoft Teams interface.  

This integration aims to bring these critical mobile communication channels under a manageable, recordable umbrella, tackling a key area of regulatory vulnerability head-on. 

Message+ functions by allowing users to send and receive SMS and WhatsApp messages using their Microsoft Teams application, consolidating communication workflows while ensuring all interactions are securely recorded 24/7 via 1GLOBAL's established technology.  

This approach not only enhances user efficiency by creating a more unified communication hub, but crucially guarantees that employers meet stringent regulatory record-keeping requirements, integrating smoothly with leading archival solutions.  

By bringing these vital channels into the Teams environment, Message+ exemplifies how targeted solutions with a 'Single Pane of Glass' strategy simplify oversight, boost operational efficiency, and ensure comprehensive compliance coverage for previously hard-to-capture communication streams. 

Investing in a unified compliance and recording strategy isn't just about acquiring new technology. It's about fundamentally transforming your compliance posture to meet the demands of the modern, digital, and heavily regulated European market.  

Is your organization ready to make the shift? 1GLOBAL Compliance is here to help.