By Paul Herdman, Vice President, Qumu EMEA

Overwhelmed by demanding new regulations, leading financial institutions are relyingon video to manage the flow of critical information to employees

With worldwide financial institutions finally beginning to recover from Brexit, and derivatives markets still adjusting to the rollout of MiFID I, the next communication crisis for this turbulent industry is already looming. As political and regulatory regimes continue to extend their influence, firms doing business across the EU must now preparing for implementation of the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II)—which reaches beyond banking to impact trading as well—while U.S.-based financial institutions are busy figuring out how to comply with GDPR (the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation).

With both regulations including organisations and their global subsidiaries, greater market transparency in the financial industry is becoming a worldwide mandate. These new directives will have a huge impact on regulated firms in 2018 and beyond and will require financial institutions
to upgrade their processes, their compliance operations and most importantly their communication technologies.

A 2017 Thomson Reuters survey revealed the average annual cost of compliance for global financial organisations is $119M per organisation. Additionally, 73% of communication professionals reported that communicating company news to employees is a serious challenge and 37% reported internal silos as the number one challenge for internal communications.

As these companies respond to increasing demands of regulators to meet new directives, many are proactively focusing on developing robust communication programmes. And the centrepiece of these new programmes is, in many cases, an enterprise video platform. Live or on demand, IT executives know that video communication can be fully automated, easily searchable and consumed on any device—making it the perfect communication solution in highly regulated environments. In fact, if managed well, video communication can translate into shorter time-to-compliance, and save financial services firms hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars per year per employee.

But how?

Enterprise video to the rescue

There are many ways using an enterprise video platform can help financial institutions meet compliance directives:

Timely communication: when workforces are dispersed, video messages can be easily created and instantly distributed to employees as regulations change.

Opportunities for feedback: key stakeholders can submit feedback and questions to the executive team, which can be captured and tracked for future resolution, or to identify gaps in the current process.

Timely collaboration: financial institutions can create private communication channels where key team members can share knowledge, insights and outcomes related to their discipline or functional responsibility.

Strategy alignment: video is a great way to present a consistent story across the organisation—before the message is taken externally and any room for misalignment is eliminated.

Increased readiness: video polls can be used to gauge readiness on a specific topic or portion of a new regulation, reinforcing mission-critical compliance procedures.

Documented audit trail: with marketing teams playing a key role in the new directives, automated workflows for approvals and audit trails are key for financial promotions and marketing collateral compliance.

Configurable security: executives can share knowledge quickly across the organisation, privately to specific groups of key stakeholders or to larger audiences with no content restrictions.

Reporting and analytics: a video content management system can provide advanced analytics on content review, meeting attendance and overall engagement with the company message.

In conclusion – broaden your reach

Technology investments in enterprise video are key to mitigating regulatory risk. Not only do they provide a platform to communicate how regulatory changes will impact activity, but they allow financial institutions to quickly adapt to evolving rollouts, and ensure that all financial activities, including trades, remain in compliance. With the right enterprise video platform in place, many global financial institutions have been prepared well in advance for MiFID II and GDPR to happen. Is your company ready?