The UK financial sector is grappling with a daunting challenge: navigating the tidal wave of unstructured data generated by digital communications in the AI era. A staggering 7 billion new messages are being created every day, presenting compliance teams with an almost insurmountable task – to sift through the noise and identify genuine risks amidst the digital clutter.
Industry leaders gathered at the Smarsh Connect event in London recently shared their insights on this pressing issue. The consensus was clear: firms must master the complex web of digital communications while upholding corporate trust, a feat that is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve. As Kim Crawford Goodman, CEO of Smarsh, noted, 'the truth has got more rules these days,' highlighting the need for robust systems that can accurately analyse and rely on data.
Forward-thinking institutions are beginning to view stored conversations not just as a regulatory obligation but also as a valuable source of context and intelligence. International financial firms are actively seeking to extract deeper meaning from their archives, recognising that understanding the underlying intent of a conversation provides a crucial advantage in mitigating threats before they escalate.
Many organisations have accumulated 'data debt' due to outdated management strategies, relying on ineffective blanket bans or rigid corporate policies that fail to secure activities beyond the corporate firewall. Sonia Cheng, Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting, stressed that firms can no longer depend on prohibition policies alone and must adopt a more holistic approach to risk. Instead of attempting to tackle every potential issue, companies should pragmatically assess where material risks lie and address those specifically.
Deploying advanced analytics or AI on top of disorganised data repositories is considered an operational dead end, as the technology will inevitably fail to deliver accurate results if the foundational data is weak. Cheng highlighted that 'you can't put lipstick on a pig' – in this case, attempting to deploy sophisticated technology on compromised data is akin to trying to polish a subpar product.