Month: May 2023

Compliance may not be fun, but it can be easy. By investing the time now to set up a flexible and adaptive compliance system, you can save your team time and trouble in the future. Here are a few best practices to consider when establishing and maintaining your electronic recordkeeping compliance system.

It All Starts with the Manual

When it comes to keeping you and your firm compliant with SEC and FINRA regulations around recordkeeping, everything should start and end with your compliance manual. Documenting your compliance rules and practices has several advantages. When your rules are documented, you reduce confusion and you have a source of truth that employees can turn to when they have any questions or concerns. Having a compliance manual and conducting periodic training helps maintain accountability.

Archive

The first step is to ensure that employees are clear on which communication channels are approved and which are not approved. All known communication channels should fall into one bucket or the other – there shouldn’t be any communication channels that don’t appear on your list. If you ban WhatsApp, don’t assume that your employees will extrapolate that ban and apply it to Signal and Telegram. If you allow Twitter, make sure you have a clear policy on Mastadon as well.

Data Retention & Storage

In most cases your data will need to be stored for 5 years if you are a Registered Investment Advisor and the first two years in an easily accessible place (“easily accessible place” is vague, but electronic storage that can be easily searched, indexed, filtered, and reviewed is recommended).  All written communications from both current AND prospective clients must be archived, so that includes any advertisements (email marketing, social media marketing, flyers, etc).

Test Your Systems

It’s not enough just to have compliance systems and processes in place, you need to ensure that the systems are capturing all expected client communications and that employees aren’t communicating outside of these channels. Schedule a time every month to log  into your archiving system and make sure that it is capturing all of the information you are expecting – any changes to your website, all of your social media posts, any text messages and all of your emails. Test your reporting system to make sure it is capturing all of your reviews.

Review and Audit

Set a specific percentage of client communications that you randomly review (this percentage might vary by firm size, but aim for at least 10%), and be sure to review any flagged communications. Your compliance system should flag potentially non-compliant words in your communications, words like “guarantee” or “promise.” Schedule semi-annual practice audits so that you are ready for the real event.

Be honest about shortcomings! 

SEC Chair Gary Gensler said, “If you mess up – and people do mess up sometimes – come in and talk to us, cooperate with our investigation, and remediate your misconduct.” The SEC has been true to their word, offering reduced fines (or even no fines) for companies that self-report and cooperate with the SEC on investigations.

Compliance Starts at the Top

Compliance is everyone’s responsibility. From interns to senior managers, everyone who is communicating with clients has a responsibility to archive their conversations. When leaders in your firm set a good example, it’s much easier for others to follow. By following compliance rules and admitting when there are shortcomings, you create a culture of honesty and accountability. 

Compliance Starts Now

Start now! If you are overwhelmed and not sure how to get started, trust us, it’s much easier to start now and store messages now than it will be 6 months from trying to track down old messages.

To learn more visit, presults.com.

Contributor – Anne Harris, Head of Marketing, Presults

Texting is the default communication method in 2023, but it is still a new frontier for financial advisors. The past few years have seen a transition from in-person meetings with financial advisors to video conferences through popular platforms like Zoom. The next big transition in communication between financial advisors and their clients will be a move from calls and emails to text messaging. According to Simple Texting, 70% of consumers opted in to receive texts from businesses in 2022, and 61% said that they want the ability to text the business back.

Text messaging is convenient and allows users to communicate in a brief, informal way that saves time. Rather than another email crowding your inbox or a phone call where both parties must be present at the same time, text messaging allows for on-demand communication at the user’s convenience. Everything from appointment confirmations to portfolio updates can be done via text, but how do you ensure the correspondence is safe and compliant?

Text messaging your clients comes with risks. In 2022, the SEC levied $1.1 billion in fines against financial firms because “firms’ employees routinely communicated about business matters using text messaging applications on their personal devices.” There are a number of steps you and your firm should take to comply with SEC and FINRA regulations. First, develop written policies and procedures around texting. Texting can take place on iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram and Google Voice, just to name a few, so be sure to address all of the channels your employees are using. Once your policies are established, all employees must be trained and periodically updated.

Your firm can implement compliant client texting in a few ways. One way is to utilize a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology that easily integrates with compliant archiving software. Some compliance software, like Presults, offers a phone application that you can download from the app store and use to text just like you normally would. With this solution, you will need a new business phone number, but will be able to use your existing device to text with clients, so you won’t need a second device. 

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when texting:

1. Always keep a security wall between your personal communications and your business communications. Having a separate phone number from your personal number protects your privacy in the event of an audit.
2. Include standard disclosures at the start of any new text message conversation. If you are using texting to advertise to your clients, be sure to include the option for clients to opt out of these types of communications.
3. Periodically test your security parameters, you should be using two-step authentication and encryption with all of your client communications.

The Takeaway:

Meet your clients where they are. Clients, and especially younger clients, expect that they can contact their financial advisor via text message. Texting opens your firm up to audit risks, so minimize that risk by having a policy in place, using the right tools to text message compliantly, and taking the effort to make sure your messages are being sent with robust security protocols.  To learn more visit, presults.com.

Contributor – Larry Shumbres

Published on Nasdaq.com, May 3rd, 2023

SMS archiving refers to the process of saving and storing text messages (SMS) for future reference or compliance purposes. With the increasing reliance on SMS for communication, it has become important for businesses and organizations to implement SMS archiving solutions to ensure that they have a record of all their SMS communication. In this article, we will look at the reasons for SMS archiving and the various options available for SMS archiving.

Why is SMS archiving important?

There are several reasons why SMS archiving is important for businesses and organizations:

1. Compliance: In certain industries, businesses are required to keep a record of all communication for compliance purposes. This includes SMS communication or otherwise known as texting.  SMS archiving ensures that businesses have a record of all SMS communication, which can be produced as evidence in case of any legal or regulatory issues.
2. Record-keeping: SMS archiving helps businesses and organizations keep a record of their communication for future reference. This can be useful in cases where there is a need to refer back to a specific SMS conversation or message.
3. Productivity: SMS archiving can help improve productivity by making it easier to search and retrieve specific SMS messages. This can save time and effort that would otherwise be spent trying to locate a specific SMS message.
4. Security: SMS archiving can help businesses and organizations protect their SMS communication from being lost or deleted. This is particularly important in cases where SMS communication contains sensitive or confidential information.

Options for SMS archiving

There are several options available for SMS archiving, which include:

1. Manual archiving: In this method, businesses and organizations manually save and store their SMS communication. This can be done by printing out the SMS messages or saving them as digital files on a computer or server.
2. SMS archiving software: There are several SMS archiving software solutions available in the market that allow businesses and organizations to automatically save and store their SMS communication. These solutions typically have features such as search and retrieval, data export, and data protection.  One of the best solutions, Presults, proactively monitors and archives this data in real-time saving compliance teams hundreds of hours on the review process.

In conclusion, SMS archiving is an important process for businesses and organizations to ensure that they have a record of all their SMS communication. There are several options available for SMS archiving, including manual archiving and SMS archiving software.  To learn more visit, presults.com.

Contributor – Larry Shumbres

Published on Nasdaq.com, January 4th, 2023