Choosing a communications monitoring solution is a big investment for any organization, and the European operation of one of Japan’s largest financial groups was no different. Headquartered in Tokyo with major subsidiaries in London, Hong Kong, and New York, Daiwa operates in sales and trading services across a variety of financial products to both corporate and institutional clients.
Daiwa’s small monitoring and surveillance team needed a solution that helped them find signals through the noise, reduce manual effort, and uncover true risk. After taking a look at the available options in the field, in 2020 Daiwa chose Relativity Trace as the solution that could meet their current needs and prepare them to expand their program to include true risk detection in the future.
Why Did Daiwa Choose Relativity Trace?
1. Automating ingestion, analysis, and review. Moving from three disparate reviewing systems into one, during their first eight months after implementation, more than 13 million documents were ingested into Relativity Trace for the monitored individuals in Daiwa’s EU office.
2. Japanese language support. “Being a Japanese firm, one of our main concerns was around the quality of the Japanese translation and how it would affect the alerts being generated by the system on both electronic and audio communications,” James Ong, monitoring and surveillance team lead at Daiwa, said. “We have continued to work with Relativity on improving this quality and have seen great increases in the support of Japanese across the system.”
3. Customization. The customer support team worked with many Daiwa stakeholders and technology partners to get eComms surveillance customized to Daiwa’s unique use cases and complex escalation process. Within five months, the full, multifaceted workflow was live and reviewers were operating in the system.
4. Alert reduction. The team saw efficiency increase with alerts reduced by more than 80 percent in the first eight months.
One Customizable Surveillance Platform
With a small team responsible for monitoring electric and audio communications, the volume of data and the process for review had previously been cumbersome. Daiwa needed an automated communications surveillance system that could alert on both audio and electronic communications in one unified platform. Due to insurmountable audio data volumes, the team had previously relied on manual sampling for audio calls, which can often leave teams with incomplete and inaccurate information about the level of risk.
“Trace is able to bring in a variety of communication types and sources and keep up with an increasing amount of data,” said James. “It has become an indispensable tool for Daiwa in the detection and prevention of potential market abuse.”
Now reviewing in one unified solution, the team does not have to go into multiple systems to pull out relevant communications. Therefore, they can spend more time on analysis and context.
The team can also confidently review both electronic and audio communications in Japanese. Relativity Trace’s automated workflows and unique, built-in escalation process have allowed the team to support their global department more cohesively—even with only one native Japanese speaker.
Results by the numbers:
- 5 channels
- 13 million documents
- 5 months to implementation
- Over 80% fewer alerts
- 3,100 hours of audio reviewed in 1 year
Eliminating False Positives and Empowering Teams for the Future
An alert reduction of 80 percent has proven that Daiwa’s decision to partner with Relativity Trace was the right one. With Trace’s significant investment in AI throughout the last year, Daiwa intends to look toward future implementations that utilize behavioral analytics, including time of calls and participants in calls—both public and private—to drill down further into risky content.
“With an automated system that has all communications in one place, we’re able to add some complexity to our previously used manual methods. We have moved our capabilities forward, even implementing only certain lexicons over certain groups and further specificity,” James said. “Our partnership with Relativity will continue to allow us to monitor our large employee base and focus on true risky behavior.”
