Speak [Too] Freely: 10 Times Behavox Voice Identified Market Abuse on Voice Communications

Traders are 10x more likely to use the telephone or other voice communication channels when discussing fraudulent activity than they are via e-communication platforms like email or instant messaging.

A major reason for this is that an increasing number of bad actors are under the impression that their firms’ voice monitoring solutions are either non-existent or inept, and that there is little chance that their conversations are being monitored.

Recorded, yes. Monitored, no.

This is because legacy voice surveillance solutions do not actively monitor communication data for risk. Instead, compliance teams have to manually review randomly selected content, with many listening to just 1% of calls. As the average employee spends almost eight hours per week making calls, listening to even just 1% of calls is not only an incredibly time-consuming approach, but it’s also incredibly flawed, with a 99% chance that any problematic content is hiding in calls that go completely unmonitored.

Thankfully, there’s a better way, Behavox Voice offers market-leading speech analytics for fraud detection in financial services. Our advanced AI and machine learning technology does the hard work for you by applying Risk Focus when deciding which calls to flag for review, therefore, users now only need to listen to the calls that really matter. This saves time and money, as you require fewer compliance officers to trawl through voice communications, and also saves you from potential reputational harm, executive losses, or financial fines that come from not identifying problematic content.

Here are the top 10 instances of market abuse that Behavox Voice discovered in 2021:

1. Scenario: Insider Dealing

Participant 1: I need you to place more orders before close
Participant 2: and you’re sure it’s going to crash before the end of the week
Participant 1: yeah I trust my guy on this, their report isn’t going to be what people are expecting so we need people to be getting excited about it
Participant 2: and then we sell
Participant 1: and then we sell

2. Scenario: Unauthorised Activities

Participant 1: have you got any other news for me?
Participant 2: I’ll whatsapp you the rest mate
Participant 1: top man, thanks

3. Scenario: Wash Trades

Participant 1: so how much am I buying of [company name removed]?
Participant 2: fifty nine
Participant 1: ok and you will match?
Participant 2: yep same stock same size

4. Scenario: Insider Information, Bribery

Participant 1: Hey Jen… anyway I was wondering if I could take you for lunch soon? I’m working on a few telecoms projects at the moment and would love to understand a bit more about what is going on at ground level
Participant 2: Sure. I’ve got a bit of a busy schedule this week but maybe we could next week. I’ll text you some dates.
Participant 1: Wonderful, thanks.

5. Scenario: Insider Info

Participant 1: Hi mate, it’s (name blurred), on a temp line, looks like (company name blurred) are indeed about to buy (company name blurred) buy big
Participant 2: Understood. Will do. Enjoy your trip. Hope you’re managing to catch a bit of a break.
Participant 1: I will do in a couple of days. Speak soon.
Employee was sharing tips with other traders using a burner phone. Behavox identified the speaker was using a phone number which was not assigned to them and flagged an Alert.

6. Scenario: Collusion

Participant 1: Hey Bro, I am short this month. Can I ask a favour?
Participant 2: Tell me about it.
Participant 1: I will buy 50 Mil (Company X) bond from you at point 9 and sell it back to you at 1
Participant 2: hmmm not sure if it’s possible but I will check

7. Scenario: Front Running

Participant 1: Hey man J just called
Participant 2: What about?
Participant 1: He told me to place an order for (Company X) at 4pm
Participant 2: Let me check the price now.
Participant 2: It’s trading at 1.76 now. How much is J buying?
Participant 1: 12 Million Shares. Which will sky rocket the price. I think I’m gonna place.
Participant 2: OK. Same for me. Let’s do it.
Participant 1: It’s done

8. Scenario: Password Sharing

Participant 1: I really need to create this label for Charles to place this order before close, what’s your password?
Participant 2: Gladiator nineteen eighty six with a capital g
Participant 1: thanks mate, owe you one

9. Scenario: Insider Dealing, Personal Account Dealing

Participant 1: hey bro, I’ve got another tip from my guy at (company x) which makes me think this is something to bet on
Participant 2: shall I go for it then?
Participant 1: yeah, put it through on Mum’s account though. I don’t want any buys linked to my account
Participant 2: sure thing, how much?

10. Scenario: Fraud

Participant 1: this is too easy, I love these retail investors
Participant 2: you’re like the Elon Musk of food stores
Participant 1: literally
Participant 1: it’s a few engineered tweets and our prices soars
Participant 2: the master manipulator

Find Your Voice

Our high-quality speech-to-text-transcription boasts an ‘out-the-box’ accuracy of 88%, which gets better with usage, thanks to its groundbreaking unsupervised learning models.

With Behavox Voice, reviewers can quickly and accurately identify flagged content, resulting in a laser-focused, efficient review process.

Contact us to learn how you can start monitoring voice, and start generating insights that protect you from risk in as little as three weeks.

Find Your Voice

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