Unearthing the risks and opportunities hidden in websites

The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has seen finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies con­sol­i­date dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion into a short­er win­dow to improve online com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels and stay con­nect­ed to cus­tomers. This has accel­er­at­ed dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strate­gies by six years, accord­ing to research by Twilio. Yet while adop­tion of new­er dig­i­tal tools has pro­pelled for­wards, the web­site, which remains the face of a busi­ness, is some­times for­got­ten.

It’s cru­cial, for com­pli­ance, that firms can evi­dence dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions across their web estates with accu­ra­cy and con­fi­dence. Due to the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic, firms are also pub­lish­ing more infor­ma­tion that has to be cap­tured and archived. This has made archiv­ing mod­ern web­sites an even more dif­fi­cult task.

Mod­ern web­sites are more expe­ri­ence led, with dynam­ic or per­son­alised mod­ules, videos, drop­downs, rich media and vast datasets. Web archiv­ing cap­tures online records in a for­mat that’s time-stamped, legal­ly admis­si­ble and avail­able for replay.

“One of the biggest con­cerns for finan­cial ser­vices firms is whether they meet the require­ments set forth by reg­u­la­tors,” says David Clee, chief exec­u­tive of web­site archiv­ing and mon­i­tor­ing firm Mir­ror­Web. “From the Finan­cial Con­duct Author­i­ty (FCA) to the US Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion and Finan­cial Indus­try Reg­u­la­to­ry Author­i­ty, reg­u­la­tors often view inac­cu­rate or incom­plete records as non-com­pli­ance.

“Due to lega­cy com­pli­ance plat­forms and redun­dant in-house process­es, many finan­cial ser­vices firms are unable to pro­duce qual­i­ty records that call into ques­tion their abil­i­ty to evi­dence com­pli­ance.”

The rapid adop­tion of new tech­nolo­gies, even before this year’s pan­dem­ic struck, has meant the way firms com­mu­ni­cate and engage with cus­tomers, from inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools to social and web plat­forms, is under unprece­dent­ed scruti­ny.

The FCA issued a record £392 mil­lion in fines in 2019 com­pared with £229 mil­lion in 2017, rep­re­sent­ing a sig­nif­i­cant increase. Fur­ther to this, a study from Tele­ware iden­ti­fied that two in five firms are risk­ing non-com­pli­ance with arti­cle 16 of the Euro­pean Union’s Mar­kets in Finan­cial Instru­ments Direc­tive II, or MiFID II, over record-keep­ing, fac­ing fines of €5 mil­lion or 10 per cent of their annu­al turnover.

Trans­ac­tions made online between July 2019 and July 2020 were 19 per cent high­er than the year before, accord­ing to analy­sis by ACI World­wide. This trend is set to con­tin­ue, led by the ecom­merce shift the pan­dem­ic has enforced, which means under­stand­ing what was said on a web­site, and when, has become even more crit­i­cal.

In this land­scape, it’s no sur­prise that both dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and com­pli­ance bud­gets have increased this year. Recent research by Steel­Eye found 40 per cent of firms have been giv­en a high­er com­pli­ance bud­get to man­age prob­lem areas since the pan­dem­ic began. Finan­cial ser­vices firms must take imme­di­ate action to min­imise risk as they advance their dig­i­tal efforts at greater speed, ensur­ing their inter­nal con­trols and process­es can cap­ture, mon­i­tor and evi­dence dig­i­tal chan­nels.

“Sad­ly, there is no ‘half com­pli­ance’,” says MirrorWeb’s Clee. “In the eyes of reg­u­la­tors, you’re either cap­tur­ing com­plete records of your online com­mu­ni­ca­tions or you’re not. It’s not just about reg­u­la­tion. By not hav­ing web­site records, com­pa­nies also risk trade­mark infringe­ment, legal dis­putes and brand assets being com­pro­mised or lost. Web archiv­ing solves all these issues, while also pre­sent­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in oth­er busi­ness areas.”

Indeed, the savvi­est com­pa­nies are real­is­ing that web­site archiv­ing, and under­stand­ing exact­ly what is com­mu­ni­cat­ed across their web­sites, is not just a tool for risk man­age­ment and meet­ing their com­pli­ance oblig­a­tions. It also presents unique oppor­tu­ni­ties through­out the organ­i­sa­tion, most notably improv­ing trans­paren­cy and brand val­ue at a time when cus­tomers increas­ing­ly care about who they inter­act with.

“The sen­ti­ment around com­pli­ance is often neg­a­tive, but we feel there are also very pos­i­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties here for com­pa­nies,” says Clee. “Those who pro­vide trans­paren­cy while pro­tect­ing cus­tomers’ inter­ests are more like­ly to fare bet­ter in the cur­rent cli­mate and beyond. Know­ing what they com­mu­ni­cat­ed and when allows organ­i­sa­tions to be more trans­par­ent and account­able, and bet­ter able to pro­tect both their own inter­ests and those of their cus­tomers.

“To put it sim­ply, firms that pro­vide excel­lent dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences, as well as improved online com­pli­ance, will enhance their rep­u­ta­tion and per­cep­tion in the eyes of cus­tomers.”

Mir­ror­Web cap­tures, archives and pre­serves web-based con­tent. Born out of a large-scale web preser­va­tion project on behalf of the UK gov­ern­ment, its archiv­ing plat­form is now wide­ly adopt­ed by finan­cial ser­vices firms around the world, giv­ing them com­plete con­trol and con­fi­dence in what they cap­ture.

From small local­ly-based web­sites to vast glob­al web estates, MirrorWeb’s tech­nol­o­gy was built to cap­ture dynam­ic con­tent and com­plete dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences. The com­pa­ny dri­ves inno­va­tion to firms, sup­port­ing their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion while help­ing them to improve dig­i­tal com­pli­ance and over­sight.

Next year will be an excit­ing time for Mir­ror­Web, with plans for expan­sion into the Unit­ed States and a move to a pure SaaS (soft­ware-as-a-ser­vice) mod­el to sup­port small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es that require some­thing with a very light touch.

Automa­tion is a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant ele­ment when it comes to record­ing, mon­i­tor­ing and super­vis­ing dig­i­tal con­tent. His­tor­i­cal­ly, some finan­cial ser­vices firms have employed teams sole­ly tasked with this respon­si­bil­i­ty. But with the rapid increase of dig­i­tal chan­nels and con­stant updates to web estates, it’s no longer fea­si­ble with­out auto­mat­ed sup­port.

MirrorWeb’s automa­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly dri­ves down com­pli­ance costs and improves oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy by remov­ing the need for any man­u­al effort and allow­ing teams to improve their inter­nal con­trols and process­es.

MirrorWeb’s web archiv­ing and mon­i­tor­ing tech­nol­o­gy is high­ly con­fig­urable, enabling finan­cial ser­vices organ­i­sa­tions to define the fre­quen­cy of cap­ture along with what they cap­ture. The company’s inno­va­tion makes it pos­si­ble to include or exclude spe­cif­ic areas across a web estate. It can con­duct crawls by geolo­ca­tion or device and even archive gat­ed-web­site con­tent such as intranets. This is a huge step away from lega­cy offer­ings and gives busi­ness­es in the finan­cial sec­tor full con­fi­dence in the records they cap­ture.

“Our vision is to give finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies own­er­ship of their dig­i­tal truth,” Clee con­cludes. “At the close of 2020, we’re proud to say we’ve helped a num­ber of glob­al firms achieve this dur­ing such chal­leng­ing times. We know the web will con­tin­ue to be a pri­ma­ry com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel for busi­ness­es all over the world, mean­ing web archiv­ing has a huge role to play in keep­ing reg­u­lat­ed firms com­pli­ant and pre­serv­ing infor­ma­tion for the future. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to deliv­er inno­va­tion to our cus­tomers and sup­port­ing their dig­i­tal com­pli­ance and trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives.”

To learn more about Mir­ror­Web, please vis­it www.mirrorweb.com

Pro­mot­ed by

Mir­ror­Web