The Implications of Sarbanes-Oxley on Call Centers
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)
In response to a number major corporate and accounting scandals early in the new millennium (which cost investors billions of dollars), Congress passed the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act, otherwise known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), to increase regulation of public companies. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act established call center compliance requirements for financial institutions. Thus, SOX became one of a number of new, major regulatory acts that permanently changed the call center industry.
The Act’s stated goal: “To protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures made pursuant to the securities laws, and for other purposes.” Since SOX came into effect, in 2002, call centers have had to increasingly focus not only on providing superior customer service to financial industry customers, but also on ensuring that such call center platforms – like call recording, screen capture and speech analytics – were designed to facilitate strict audit and regulatory compliance. SOX applies to companies with less than $75 million in public equity float that are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
SOX in part established a vortex of extensive regulatory guidelines for the documentation of business processes and transactions.
The SOX Environment
The new regulations mandate that entities covered under the Act create and maintain electronic records in their regular course of business. This means that call center operations have to be specifically designed for customers falling under the purview of SOX. Specifically, incoming and outgoing call center interactions now had be captured in their entirety and stored in an easily organized and searchable hierarchical folder structure.
In order to simply discovery and audit process in compliance with SOX, industry has developed the most state-of-the-art call center recording platforms for financial services clients.
Applied Business Technologies (ABT) is expert in delivering call recording capacity which complies with SOX and industry standards. The ABT recording solution platform provides a secure environment while allowing rules-based permissions, data retention and DOD secure deletion, Voice and Screen Capture for liability protection and dispute resolutions. Our robust call recording software also safeguards your verbal contracts from the “he said-she said” disputes which can result in costly and non-productive lawsuits.
Is your call center recording platform compliant with SOX? Isn’t it time that you partnered with ABT to assess and upgrade your call recording, screen capture, and speech analytics platforms to excel in compliance and data storage for the financial services industry? Call Applied Business Technologies today at 561-272-1232, or email us at info@appliedcorp.com. Let’s get started building the best SOX-compliant call recording solution platform for your call center today!
