New Platform Eases Analyst–Trader Communications Compliance

New Jersey-based Client Instant Access (CIA) has built a cloud-based messaging platform that seeks to address fragmented communications and regulatory constraints on research analysts and traders. 

CIA co-founder and CEO Joe Vaccarella says CIA, which provides voicemail and integrated dialers to financial services firms, has created the platform, called Omnigage, to improve on the products the company already offers by focusing on specific issues the industry faces.

“One of the biggest problems that we try to address in this market is the regulatory constraints—especially within the last several years—on research analysts and traders,” Vaccarella says. “How do you deal with security reviews, how is all that data handled and communications tracked?”

Omnigage uses audit trails to track communications. Customer-generated content, such as email, can be routed to the compliance section of the system. If a compliance officer has their own login, they can receive and then approve that content, and send it to the traders or research analysts, who can send the information out. The platform captures all communication with customers, whether inbound or outbound. 

Vaccarella says in the financial industry, communications such as voice, email or SMS tend to be kept in standalone systems or applications. This can make data insecure: For an analyst or salesperson, having information scattered in different places increases the risk of losing data.

Omnigage allows users to make phone calls natively to the different applications they use. “If you’re centrally holding all your data in your customer relationship management (CRM) system, whether they are on Symphony, on Bloomberg or any other platform, it is integrated so that data offloads back to your Salesforce. It’s all tracked, and it’s all in in one place,” Vaccarella says.

The firm says the platform is also designed to meet the data privacy requirements of financial firms. “No data ever leaves [users’] walls. There are secure envelopes that are passed through to make calls, send out emails, or send out SMS that specifically just work with their CRM or whatever application they have,” he says.

CIA’s long-term goal is to roll out Omnigage to existing and new financial services clients, and even to other industries, such as healthcare. The firm is already working with a number of clients on a beta version of the platform, and says it is ready for launch. 

CIA was founded in 1997. Almost 90% of its customers are within the financial sector, including banks and brokers.