The FSA are not planning on extending the recording requirements beyond those Firms currently caught by COBS 11.8 - Banks, Investment Houses, Hedge Funds and the like - MIFID Firms are caught but IFA's, Insurance or Mortgage Brokers are not.
From Q4 2010 Firms will be required to have in place adequate arrangements to capture, store and retrieve "relevant" calls made on hand held devices - this may take the form of voice, SMS, IM or video messaging. Records will need to be available for 6 months.
Data protection issues regarding the capture of "personal" conversations and messages have been addressed. The FSA expects Firms to have in place arrangements to ensure that business calls are only made on Firm supplied / sponsored equipment. Looks like everyone will therefore be expected to keep two phones - one (recorded) for business and a personal phone for non business stuff.
I am sure that this is going to open up a significant can of worms and smacks of big brother.
the rationale behind it is that it closes a loophole - but what is going to stop the deliberate transgressor who simply has a third phone for doing the "dodgy deals?". The objective is to provide more evidence of a contemporaneous nature and prevent Market Abuse.
Staff that play by the Rules have nothing to fear from over zealous Compliance Officers.
I wonder what this will do to the share price for Information Technology Companies who are able to provide elegant solutions?
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