Buoyed by the interest in our Siri poll, we decided to run a survey more relevant to our core market.
We believe that with an investment of under $10 per trader per working day, banks and other financial institutions can greatly enhance their monitoring and surveillance capability and therefore reduce the risk of another scandal. Best case, they stop it before it happens. Worst case, they nip it in the bud.
Not everyone agrees, arguing that their existing systems are capable of catching the next LIBOR or London Whale, just that they need to be better employed or have more people thrown at them. Possibly true, but the majority of our survey respondents didn’t agree. We surveyed 2,000 Americans across a wide demographic base, and the response speaks for itself (Click on the image to enlarge it):
Over half believe that major investment is still required, notwithstanding the enormous sums already spent. For example, according to the Financial Times, 98,000 Deutsche Bank staff have already been retrained in core corporate values.
It was interesting to note some of the key insights gained from the survey, one of which was that in the key 35-44 age bracket (much affected by the squeeze on incomes for working families), the swing against the banks was higher at over 60%:
We reckon that the $10 per day investment would be enough to transform the compliance and surveillance of trading activity, and to allow companies to have much greater visibility of their staff’s day to day activity, as well as allowing regulators to do their job more effectively. A combination of existing technology being brought together, with a dash of newer technologies such as voice recognition, biometrics and “big data” analytics, would be an excellent start.
Seems a lot of people agree