- December 25, 2021
- by Last expert
- Blogs, General transcription, Transcription
- 0 Comments
The globe has grown to the point where organisations have become international, reaching out to people from all over the world and speaking a variety of languages. A business is no longer restricted to a single location or language. One such market that has risen dramatically is the financial market, which also happens to be one of the most important clients of financial transcribing. Banks, corporations, financial consultants, insurance firms, and other financial marketplaces are all covered by this service.
What is financial transcription ?
The procedure of financial transcribing is similar to that of any other sort of transcription service. It is the process of carefully listening to a tape and then converting it into a text document. Due to the topic matter, financial transcriptions differ from other types of transcription. Financial reports, interim results, business surveys, sales reports, and annual shareholder or investor meetings are common examples.
Due to the large amount of numbers mentioned – prices, interest reports, sales results, incomes and expenses, spreadsheets, and so on – financial transcriptions necessitate a high level of concentration. Because even the tiniest error can have substantial and potentially severe effects, precision is critical.
Importance of financial transcription?
Finance teams in any firm or trading industry, in general, require financial transcribing.
Financial transcripts may be required at annual meetings with shareholders or investors, as well as sales and marketing meetings, to assess a company’s financial health.
A corporation may need to transcribe financial data for a variety of reasons. Here are some of the most common financial transcripts requested by businesses:
Scenarios of Popular Financial Transcription
- Earnings calls
- Annual meetings with shareholders or investors
- Financial and sales reports
- Business surveys
- Analysts reports
- Investor updates
- Market research
- Interim results
Benefits of Financial Transcription
First and foremost, a good financial transcript accurately relays the entire message.
It eliminates confusion or misinterpretation, especially when material is professionally transcribed by trained professionals.
There are, of course, alternative ways to record data, such as audio recordings or manual note-taking. A completely transcribed document, on the other hand, makes it easier for audiences to absorb the material without missing important details.
It can also be used to repurpose digital and audio assets.
Financial transcriptions can allow your company the freedom to use it for other types of content or distribution channels.
It’s also easy to translate a full financial audio or video transcript into a different target language.
For example, after recording and transcribing a meeting with your team about Q1 finances, you can utilise the transcript as a report to distribute to other company members, along with an excellent summary you prepared quickly based on the transcript.
Benefits of Financial Transcripts
Here are some examples of how you can use text copy to assist your business:
- webinars,
- written reports,
- print publication,
- reference for collecting and storing internal data,
- and usable material for website content
How can you do Financial Transcription?
The majority of financial transcribing follows the same path as ordinary transcription. After you choose a service to work with, you give your files to the transcription team, who will work quickly and precisely to return your files to you in the format and timeframe you specify.
You might ask the corporation to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). This is the last step before the transcription begins. You don’t want your company’s financial information to fall into the wrong hands, so be sure the corporation is comfortable doing so.
You should give the provider instructions: what format do you require? Do you have any tables or graphs? When do you have to submit your work? Do you want timestamps and speaker identification? Is there anything else specific you should mention?
Send your files through a secure file transfer once you’ve gotten everything in order with your transcriptionist.
The transcriptionist will then listen and transcribe using their equipment. At the conclusion, they’ll go through everything again and make any necessary changes.
Following the transcriptionist’s revisions, the file is forwarded to a quality assurance (QA) team, who perform additional checks and listen to the audio to ensure that the transcribed document is error-free.
The QA team is in charge of:
- Checking grammatical and contextual errors
- Formatting the document as requested
- Filling in any words missed by the transcriptionist
- Final quality check of the document
Editing is the most crucial phase in the transcription process since it turns a decent transcript into an error-free, ready-to-use document.
Drawbacks of Automated Transcription
The fact that the business world is shrinking every day is an important element to consider. English, the worldwide business language, is being spoken by an increasing number of people who do not speak it as their first language. Speech recognition algorithms cannot correctly transcribe English with a heavy accent. Forget about revising transcriptions that are riddled with errors and waste your time.
According to F1F9, a company that provides financial modelling and business forecasting to blue-chip companies, simple spreadsheet errors cost up to one out of every five large corporations money.
See how an accountant’s erroneous do-it-yourself transcription caused the organisation more money in this case study.
“Fidelity. A $4.32/share year-end dividend distribution was forced to be cancelled by the company’s well-known Magellan fund. What is the issue? A negative sign is absent. When transferring the $1.3 billion net capital loss from the fund’s financial records to a spreadsheet, a tax accountant overlooked a negative sign. As a result, the loss became a gain, causing the dividend estimate to be $2.6 billion off.” – The Oracle
Limited Vocabulary
The majority of systems come with out-of-the-box voice recognition systems that are trained in general English and do not include industry-specific, unique phrases that are used in many people’s and enterprises’ everyday lives.
Accents
Bias in technology is a topic we discuss. Many of the people that create widely used voice recognition technologies come from largely English-speaking North American organisations. This introduces a significant bias in speech recognition systems, which has a significant impact on the accuracy of automated transcription of speakers with accents and speakers who speak in other languages.
Fast Talkers
Some folks simply speak quickly. Processing is difficult for a machine. Humans can look over a transcript numerous times to make sure they understand what someone is saying, but machines are still not very good at it.
Low Audio Quality
Low-quality microphones can result in poor sound quality. While walking, people take notes. While conversing, they move around the room.
Background Noise
This is linked to poor audio quality. You will notice a significant decline in transcription accuracy if there is ambient noise, such as automobiles passing by, bangs, booms, beeps, music, or anything else.
Although systems are improving at filtering out noise, there is still a long way to go.
Overlapping Dialogue
It’s difficult to comprehend until you watch hours and hours of people conversing, but you rapidly learn that people enjoy talking over each other.
Our ears are amazing at interpreting this and focusing on what we need to focus on, but machines aren’t.
Transcription Accuracy
All of this decreases the automatic transcription’s accuracy. Your final transcript will lose its professionalism as a result of this. If you’re a company that shares information online, this is critical. Furthermore, using automated transcripts for data processing can result in false positives, posing a considerable risk.
The percentage of mistake a transcript can have per word count is determined by transcription accuracy rates. For example, a 97 percent transcription accuracy means that there is a 3% possibility of errors per 1,000 words, or around 30 errors.
One error for an individual or organization can be damaging
Automatic transcriptions can contain potentially grave (and frequently tragically embarrassing) errors, depending on what you’re doing. One of my favourites was the conversion of egotistical into “eagle’s testicles.”
Familiarity with Financial Terminology and Concepts
There are a variety of transcription options available, including self-transcription and AI-assisted transcription, such as voice-to-text. Financial transcription, on the other hand, necessitates a high level of precision.
“Transcription systems still can’t tell the difference between homonyms like “for” and “four,” or analyse the context of phrases like ‘account’ or ‘promise.'” Because simple transcribing algorithms are unable to capture the context and meaning of a conversation, these technologies are unworkable at best.” – Insights into Corporate Compliance
Having your audio/video files transcribed by a professional with a thorough understanding of financial language and concepts can provide your company with the precision and accuracy it requires.
Benefits of Outsourcing Financial Transcription
Finding the appropriate transcription supplier is paying off for more financial institutions and other businesses that require financial transcription.
The transcribed document is returned to you in a condition that is ready to use right immediately, which is maybe the most significant benefit.
They’ll Meet Your Deadlines
Do you have a hard time meeting deadlines? Files pile up, and getting them transcribed and filed before they take over your desk can be difficult. You also have a million other things to accomplish. Sorting through everything and transcribing it yourself isn’t always possible.
Financial transcribing businesses are aware of your hectic schedule. That’s why they’re here to help you fulfil tight deadlines without sacrificing the quality and accuracy of your transcript.
The majority of financial transcribing companies even give same-day transcripts. The document can be returned to you in as little as 3 hours, depending on the staff available at the time of your request and the type of file you need transcribed.
The average turnaround time is three to five days if you’re not in a hurry. This contains timestamps, speaker recognition, specified layout, and 99 percent accuracy, among other things.
Bulk files or extensive audio recordings (above 100 hours) can take up to ten days to process.
Inquire about the company’s average turnaround times to guarantee the financial transcription supplier can meet your deadlines. You should evaluate your present and future needs, as well as whether the company can fulfil your deadlines today and in the future if you acquire a last-minute rush file.
The Transcriptionists Sign an NDA
Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are a crucial legal foundation for preventing sensitive and secret information from being made public by the recipient. Many businesses and startups utilise an NDA to protect their original ideas from being stolen by those with whom they are negotiating. Similarly, banking organisations and other businesses utilise them to protect their customers’ financial information.
According to the agreement, the data receiver (transcriptionist) must keep the confidential information in the strictest confidence for the exclusive and exclusive advantage of the Disclosing Party. In other words, anyone who hasn’t signed the agreement shouldn’t have access to it, and the transcriptionist shouldn’t be able to communicate information verbally. Other employees, friends, and family members are included.
Another important element is that the agreement will continue until the confidential information is no longer classified as confidential or until the disclosing party submits a written notice terminating the arrangement.
NDAs should be extremely known to a reputable financial transcription service, and they should have no trouble signing them if you ask.
Financial Transcription Is Affordable
Most businesses, obviously, do not have a large transcription budget. Because you are responsible for salaries, benefits, equipment, training, and hiring, hiring an in-house transcriptionist is more expensive than outsourcing. The average compensation for an in-house transcriptionist in the United States is $40,426 per year, according to ZipRecruiter.
You are not accountable for any of this when you outsource files. Depending on the number of speakers, audio quality, and turnaround time desired, financial transcribing service costs range from $1.50 to $5.00 each audio minute.
To put that in context, if you have one weekly conference that lasts 40 minutes, you’ll pay $400 each month, or $4,800 per year. Of course, you may require more or less transcription, but it’s doubtful that your needs will exceed $40,000 each year.
Spot-On Accuracy
When picking a financial transcribing service, accuracy is the most important element to consider. Deciphering numbers can be a time-consuming task.
A transcription service’s average accuracy should be 99 percent. Even better, they should provide a guarantee that your money will be refunded if the accuracy rate is not met.
When editing is taken seriously, excellent accuracy rates are usually guaranteed. After the transcriptionist has completed revisions, your document should be delivered to a QA (quality assurance) team to be double-checked by transcribe editing pros.
The goal of outsourcing your transcribing work is to receive error-free, ready-to-use files. You shouldn’t have to waste time correcting mistakes or worried about presenting something incorrect in a meeting the next day.
Use Your Firm’s Talented Staff in Profitable Areas
Every employee in a company has a skill that can be leveraged to boost profits. If that’s the case, why did you hire them? Those employees should concentrate on their strengths. Adding transcription responsibilities to their workload may force them to work longer hours, focus on the wrong things, and be less productive overall. Assigning a transcription project to someone who lacks trained grammar and listening skills may result in an inaccurate transcript. Financial transcription can be outsourced to a transcription service, which relieves your employees of the strain.
How to select the Right Financial Transcription Partner?
Now that you have all of the information you need to make an informed decision, here are some questions to ask your financial transcribing provider.
- Is there a guarantee of 99 percent accuracy? Keep in mind that the less precise they are, the more time you’ll waste fixing mistakes. Because there are so many numbers in financial transcription, accuracy is very important.
- Do the turnaround times meet your requirements and are they flexible in the event that your requirements change?
- Is a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) available from the financial transcription service?
- The transcription service should have offices with a physical address rather than a PO box.
- Are your security protocols up to date? Scaled network redundancy, visual private network (VPN) integration, dedicated secure data centres, SSL 256-bit secure encryption, and secure FTP (SFTP) servers should all be implemented.
- Do they have transcriptionists who have worked with spreadsheets and other financial documents before? This is critical because general transcriptionists may lack experience in this area, and it can be more difficult.
- Is there any insurance in place to protect both the client and the provider? Check to see if the policy covers general liability as well as cyber responsibility. General liability, sometimes known as a business owner’s policy, workers compensation, and professional liability insurance are the three basic types of insurance. Ascertain that they have all of them.
- Is the contract transparent and itemises the scope of work if one is offered? The client’s and provider’s exceptions are included in the scope. If you’re ever displeased with the provider’s work, you should be able to easily cancel the contract.
- Is the company well-established? You should be able to find reviews and testimonials, and the service should have been in operation for at least a few years to establish reliability.
- Is there a free trial available? Free trials in transcription are beneficial since they allow you to see if the service adheres to their stated accuracy rate and if they can supply the format you require.
If the financial transcribing service you’re considering can answer yes to all of these questions, it’s probably a good choice.