The Finance Team’s Guide to Unified Communications
Financial institutions know the cost of inefficient communication better than most. A missed call from a key client. A delayed approval because someone couldn’t join the meeting. A file sent over an unsecured channel.
This guide is for IT leaders, operations teams, and anyone in banking or finance looking to fix what’s broken, without inviting risk or upending business continuity.
Unified Communications gives you one secure platform for voice, video, messaging, and team collaboration. It connects your people across offices, branches, and devices. It works whether you’re behind a firewall or on the move. And it helps you stay ahead of rising expectations.
What is Unified Communications for Financial Services?
Unified Communications (UC) refers to the integration of tools like voice calling, video meetings, messaging, file sharing, and contact center functions into one cohesive system. UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) delivers these capabilities through a managed service. While often cloud-based, UCaaS can also be deployed in hybrid or on-premise configurations to meet different security or compliance needs.
In financial services, UC replaces disconnected tools and outdated phone systems with a system built to handle day-to-day operations across teams, devices, and locations. Your staff can move from call to chat to video to CRM logging without switching apps or risking data silos.
That means fewer delays, fewer errors, and better service from one system, designed to keep communication efficient and secure.
Check out this vetted list of UCaaS vendors.
Why Financial Institutions Are Upgrading Their Communication Tools
The way teams work has changed, but many financial organizations are still stuck with systems built for another era. Legacy phone setups and disconnected apps weren’t designed for mobile advisors, remote underwriters, or real-time client updates.
Call quality drops depending on location or network. Messages get buried across different channels. IT teams spend more time maintaining workarounds than improving operations. Meanwhile, compliance teams face tighter rules with fewer tools to enforce them.
What IT teams are pushing for now
- Uptime and continuity: 99.999% availability with clear failover plans.
- Traffic quality and control: Voice-optimized routing, QoS, and real-time visibility for call quality, transfers, paging, and queue handling.
- Security posture: Encryption in transit, role-based access, strong auth, and a private carrier-grade backbone where applicable. Paired with managed security services, this helps limit exposure and gives IT teams better visibility into communication-related threats and misconfigurations.
- Compliance support: Centralized audit logs, policy-based recording, voicemail-to-email with retention options, and straightforward export to archiving tools.
- Hybrid choice: Local survivability with campus appliances. Cloud manageability with on-prem resilience built in.
- Integration footprint: Native hooks for Microsoft Teams calling and Salesforce screen-pops to keep reps in their system of record.
- Device and user management: One admin plane for numbers, extensions, softphones, and remote users across branches. Virtualization support for on-prem where required.
- Messaging hygiene: Registered 10DLC for business SMS so campaigns do not get blocked.
- Managed connectivity: Managed connectivity solutions give IT teams more control over network quality, with built-in failover and traffic optimization designed for voice..
Practical Ways Unified Communications Solves Finance Challenges
In finance, delays stall deals, strain client relationships, and create exposure during audits. Communication gaps make it harder to move money, approve transactions, and respond to regulators with confidence.
With one platform, you can eliminate overlapping vendors and reduce the complexity of managing voice, video conferencing, messaging, and team collaboration tools across different banking departments or branches. That consolidation alone cuts licensing costs and lowers the burden on IT.
Contact centers run more efficiently with intelligent call routing, queue monitoring, and built-in logging. Whether clients reach out by phone or chat, agents can respond quickly and log every interaction.
Remote teams can work securely from anywhere, using encrypted softphones and authenticated mobile apps that keep client data protected. Sangoma’s managed security services add an extra layer of protection across voice, video, and messaging — especially useful for firms with distributed teams, remote work, or exposed edge devices.
For compliance, audit logs, access controls, and call records are all centralized. No scrambling for recordings. No blind spots in who accessed what. And when it’s time to prepare documentation, everything’s already organized.
Approvals and internal decisions move faster too. Legal, underwriting, client services—everyone can stay in sync, even if they’re not in the same office or on the same device.
Finance workflows already come with enough complexity. Your communication systems shouldn’t be one more layer to manage.
Common Deployment Models: Which One Fits Your Organization?
Every institution has different requirements for data control, uptime, and user management. UC doesn’t need to be one-size-fits-all.
Cloud UCaaS
Best for fast-moving firms, multi-branch operations, or lean IT departments. Cloud UCaaS delivers quick setup, minimal hardware, and simple management. You get enterprise-grade security and compliance-ready features, with none of the physical infrastructure.
Learn more about Sangoma Cloud UCaaS
Hybrid UCaaS
Good fit for firms with a mix of central offices and distributed teams. Hybrid UCaaS combines cloud with on-site resilience, using Sangoma’s StarBoxⓇ appliance. You stay operational even if your internet goes out. Great for firms that need uptime guarantees and local survivability.
On-Premises UC
For institutions with strict internal policies, specific audit controls, or existing infrastructure they want to retain. On-prem gives IT full ownership of the system. No dependency on outside data centers or third-party routing.
What About Integrations?
UC works best when it fits into the tools your teams already use.
- CRM integrations: Connects with Salesforce, Zoho, and others to log calls and customer data automatically
- Microsoft Teams: Use Sangoma’s built-in Teams integration for direct calling and messaging without juggling apps
- Custom workflows: Build automations or sync data with Sangoma’s Integration Studio
No one wants to hop between platforms just to answer a question or pull up a file.
Final Takeaway: Don’t Let Your Phone System Be the Weak Link
Financial services rely on timing, accuracy, and trust. Communication touches all of it. If your current tools are slowing things down, exposing sensitive data, or leaving gaps in service coverage, it’s not just inconvenient. It’s risky.
Modern Unified Communications platforms give you control, security, and simplicity, whether you choose cloud, hybrid, or on-premises UC deployment. And with providers like Sangoma, you’re not stuck with generic tools. You get a system that fits your environment and respects your industry’s demands.
If the system you rely on to serve clients, manage risk, and stay compliant can’t be trusted, it needs to be replaced. Talk to an expert in UC for banking and finance.