Regulators are pulling comms surveillance evidence more aggressively than ever. Every retail broker needs a defensible position across voice, chat and trade. Here is the vendor landscape in 2026.
Comms and trade surveillance stopped being a bank-only conversation the moment MiFID II and ASIC RG 271 landed on retail-derivatives brokers. In 2026, every retail broker with more than £30m revenue is expected to have both — and to be able to produce evidence quickly under a regulator ask.
This comparison covers the four vendors most commonly evaluated by brokers, plus the shape of a bespoke build partner filling the gaps.
Explicit control mapping regulators will accept.
Vulnerable-customer coverage across channels.
Full channel coverage for retail-broker sales floors.
Modern LLM triage rather than legacy rules alone.
Retail-broker patterns vs generic bank pattern library.
UK, EU, offshore options.
Long-standing trade-surveillance heavyweight.
Comms-heavy surveillance with AI-first false-positive reduction.
Comms capture + surveillance, wide industry footprint.
Regulated comms archive with growing surveillance layer.
Bespoke AI systems, engineered for the firm's own P&L and regulator envelope.
| Criterion | Nasdaq Trade Surveillance (SMARTS) | Behavox | Smarsh | Global Relay | KJ Capital |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiFID II posture | Mature | Mature | Mature | Mature | Firm-specific control map |
| Retail-broker tuning | Generic | Partial | Generic | Generic | Firm-specific |
| False-positive reduction (LLM triage) | Basic | Deep | Basic | Basic | Deep + firm-tuned |
| Full channel coverage | Trade-first | Yes | Yes | Yes | Orchestrates across vendors |
The winning shape is one enterprise vendor as the regulated system-of-record, plus a bespoke LLM-triage layer on top that reduces the reviewer load by 60–80%. Ripping out an incumbent enterprise vendor is rarely worth it; wrapping one with a firm-specific triage brain almost always is.
KJ Capital's Trade Surveillance & Comms productised build is exactly this — £110k / 8 weeks — sitting on top of your incumbent, owning the review-time and false-positive numbers.
Rarely worth the incumbent-risk. Wrap them with a firm-specific triage layer instead.
In production, 60–80% reduction in cases needing full human review, with a paper-trail regulators accept.
Defensible when the triage layer produces reasoning for every flag and every dismiss, versioned and archived.
Voice is table-stakes in 2026. Incumbents cover it; bespoke layers add retail-broker-specific pattern detection.
Depends on vendor. Bespoke triage layer can run in firm VPC.
The £15k AI Diagnostic is a two-week engagement that produces a costed build plan mapped to your stack, your regulator and your P&L.