Compliance Training Goes From Mindless to Competitive With Game Mechanics

The New York startup True Office, is helping financial firms do the impossible: Make compliance training interesting, engaging, and more effective. The secret weapon? Video game mechanics.

A graduate of the 2012 FinTech Innovation Lab, True Office worked closely with Barclays, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup to pilot its interactive learning technology. The banks' employees played games in which they were asked to investigate and analyze insider trading or money laundering scenarios in accordance with regulatory and company policies. They were tested on their ability to spot illicit behavior and their understanding of the consequences. Because people can't take in big chunks of information, games never take more than 12-15 minutes, and the application gives the players feedback on their decisions.

Users overwhelmingly responded that they better understood policies following the games, and True Office's provisional studies suggest data retention is exponentially higher than traditional methods (think of grueling HR lectures and PowerPoint presentations) in 75% less time.

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Becca Lipman is Senior Editor for Wall Street & Technology. She writes in-depth news articles with a focus on big data and compliance in the capital markets. She regularly meets with information technology leaders and innovators and writes about cloud computing, datacenters, ... View Full Bio