Symphony and Google team up on GenAI-powered voice call compliance tool for financial firms

Symphony Communications is partnering with Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)-owned Google to accelerate the rollout of an enhanced version of its voice analytics tool to financial services firms.

This comes as regulators have cracked down on communications compliance, handing down more than $2 billion in fines, many of which were related to failures to record business-related text messages.  

Financial markets infrastructure and technology platform provider Symphony will use Google Cloud’s generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) platform Vertex AI to improve its Cloud9 voice product with more advanced speech-to-text and natural language processing abilities.  

Cloud9 is used by traders to collaborate across multiple asset classes such as commodities, interest rate swaps and equity derivatives.

Symphony said with GenAI, the platform will provide financial services institutions with real-team voice analytics capabilities which can transcribe and summarize conversations for compliance purposes in addition to flagging calls for review when “suspicious discussions” are detected.

The company said the tool can also extract insights from the data it collects, for example, around customer sentiment or trending topics.

Google Cloud global head of Regulated Industries Zac Maufe said GenAI has the potential to transform the trading landscape from automating routine tasks to identifying potential misconduct through anomalies in data.

“Our expanded partnership with Symphony builds on the success of our long-standing collaboration, and with the integration of speech-to-text gen AI, Symphony can provide financial institutions with high-accuracy voice analytics that can help improve risk management and drive efficiencies across the trading floor,” Maufe said.

“We are confident that by tapping Google Cloud’s AI capabilities for voice analytics, Symphony will be able to offer the more than 1,000 institutions we serve with top-notch service that will create further efficiency and innovation in financial markets,” Symphony CEO Brad Levy added in a statement.

Levy told Reuters the company plans to release the updated product in the second quarter of 2024.

Contact the author at emily.jarvie@proactiveinvestors.com

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