How Regtech is restoring consumer trust

This week NatWest has announced it is trialling Artificial Intelligence technology from regtech recording and analysis company, Recordsure, to monitor conversations between customers and frontline staff.

The high street bank is hoping to restore consumer trust and confidence by improving the quality of advice and interactions. This follows their decision last year to get rid of bonuses for customer-facing staff in an effort to ensure advice is distributed on a case by case basis rather than commission-driven.

Provided client consent has been provided, Recordsure’s technology will record both face-to-face and telephone conversations with sales staff and analyse the interaction, classifying the discussion into sections. In this way it can flag risk factors, identify where financial advice is provided and notice if essential information has not been disclosed.

The bank has gone to lengths to communicate that information will be securely held – encrypting the data before uploading it to a server stored in a former military nuclear bunker.

The ambition is that this technology will improve the efficiency of the bank’s monitoring processes and also reduce costs associated with compliance. In many aspects of day-to-day life, our constant recording and surveillance is becoming all too familiar – however it will be interesting to see how many clients are comfortable with having their personal finance conversations so permanently retained.