Shield and LeapXpert Collaborate to Deliver Real-Time Surveillance Across Encrypted Messaging Applications

Today we are announcing our collaboration with LeapXpert, the leader in front-office conversational solutions. LeapXpert’s Federated Messaging Orchestration Platform (FMOP) enables the real-time control, monitoring, and capture of conversations on mobile messaging applications such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, LINE, Signal, and more. Conversations on these applications have become more and more prevalent in today’s work-from-anywhere environment, including across financial firms and banking institutions, where there is an inherent need for compliance and security.

With regulators like the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) dubbing data the “lifeblood” of modern regulation, Shield and LeapXpert offer advanced, tech-driven solutions that provide compliance and security oversight when employees are communicating with clients over encrypted messaging services, like WhatsApp, WeChat and others. Encrypted messaging platforms have become the preferred communication platform for many customers of financial organizations with studies showing that WhatsApp usage increased by 54% last year, and according to the FCA, the volume of data to be processed for investigations has risen by 200%, especially within these encrypted channels.

“Across financial service providers and banks, it’s the end client who wants to communicate through messaging application platforms, forcing both institutions and regulators to work together and figure out a safe and compliant way to use these valuable communication tools,” said Shiran Weitzman, CEO, and Cofounder of Shield. “As regulators begin to require more communication data, Shield, through relationships with great organizations like LeapXpert, is well-positioned to seamlessly be the communication compliance resource needed by banks and other financial institutions.”

Together, Shield, with its proven ability to automate surveillance through its AI-powered solution, and LeapXpert, will enable regulated employees to communicate with their clients and external parties who are using their preferred messaging applications from a single, centralized, and enterprise-approved application. In accordance with privacy laws like GDPR, there is a clear separation between communication for business and personal reasons, ensuring personal, private data is not recorded.

“Front-office employees are adopting messaging applications for quick, relationship-driven conversations with their customers. Enterprises must balance their governance and regulatory requirements with their need to deliver on customer expectations. Our award-winning FMOP was designed to answer this challenge,” commented Avi Pardo, COO and co-founder of LeapXpert. “By partnering with leading companies like Shield we offer our customers a robust solution that is truly best of breed.”

“Our FMOP provides a centralized, unified solution that allows employees to use a single environment to communicate to their customers regardless of the messaging application that the customer prefers. The ability to set proactive controls on who can share what information and with whom, monitor conversations in real-time and record conversations for audit and governance purposes is vital in this age of secure messaging application communication.”

Once the data has been captured by LeapXpert, the Shield platform subjects it to the same rigorous data enrichment, powerful analytics (using NLP and Shield’s unique proprietary technology of Financial Context Recognition – FCR), enhanced search tools, and proactive surveillance, as it does with all other eComms data channels. Understanding that most financial professionals are already using encrypted messaging platforms has lead Shield and LeapXpert to provide a dynamic approach to the challenge of monitoring and recording encrypted messages.

Both Shield and LeapXpert understand the increasingly vital role of messaging applications to financial professionals. It is this understanding that has led Shield and LeapXpert to collaborate and provide a dynamic, robust approach to manage the challenge of real-time monitoring, recording, and securing encrypting messages.