Text messaging has become a tool of choice among financial advisors and broker-dealers for obvious reason; it provides a quick and efficient way to communicate with clients and colleagues. However, this channel also comes with a variety of compliance and cybersecurity risks as it can lead financial companies to breach the recordkeeping requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
FINRA enforcement actions in 2017, for instance, showed the emergence of a new trend of disciplinary actions and fines against member firms and broker-dealers who communicate with their clients and colleagues via unapproved text messages.
In 2019, we can expect that the SEC’s concerns and requirements for text messaging and other new electronic communication channels will further evolve. As regulations change to meet the shifting mobile communications landscape, it is best to learn the best practices for compliance for 2019 and beyond. The following are simple strategies to remain compliant with the evolving SEC text archiving requirements:
Update WSPs Semi-Annually
A detailed Written Supervisory Procedures (WSPs) is vital to enable your employees to compliantly use text messaging in their day-to-day tasks. However, with the evolving SEC requirements regarding the use of text messaging, it is also imperative to keep your WSP updated. At a minimum, your WSP should be checked, updated, and verified by your compliance team or an outside counsel twice a year to ensure enforcement of the new rules promulgated by SEC.
Employ the Expertise of an SEC Compliance Professional
SEC compliance can be a very challenging goal if your organization’s workplace communication landscape is highly diversified. If you don’t have a compliance team in place, you may be lacking the expertise needed to ensure that your WSPs and archiving solutions are up-to-date with the latest standards. In order to ensure that the scope of your WSPs includes all the nuances of SEC recordkeeping requirements, you should consider bringing in the expertise of an outside counsel.
Partner With An Enterprise Text Message Archiving Vendor
No software vendor in the market has better acumen about mobile SMS archiving standards than those that can provide you with an archiving solution especially designed to capture and record text messages. When choosing an enterprise mobile archiving vendor, though, it’s important to choose one that provides solutions, not only the platform. Doing so will help you foster a relationship that will enable your organization to improve its compliance efforts in the long run.
In order to remain compliant with SEC text archiving requirements under Rule 17a-3 and 17a-4, broker-dealers and member firms should invest in an enterprise mobile messaging solution that will allow them to record mobile SMS, capture voice calls, archive WhatsApp chats, and other business communications more efficiently.
The TeleMessage Mobile Archiver effectively addresses compliance, regulatory, eDiscovery response requirements and reduces risk across a variety of the financial sector. TeleMessage captures and records mobile content, including SMS, MMS, voice calls, social media, and WhatsApp Chats from corporate or BYOD mobile phones. Messages are securely and reliably retained within TeleMessage servers or forwarded to an archiving data storage vendor of your choice.
Our mobile archiving products securely capture content from mobile carriers and mobile devices for a variety of ownership models (BYOD, CYOD,and employer-issued). With our multiple archiving methods, you can always find the right tools or blend for your text message archiving and voice call recording requirements:
TeleMessage offers cross-carrier and international mobile text and calls archiving for Corporate and BYOD phones. Visit www.telemessage.com to learn more about our enterprise mobile archiver’s capabilities or Contact Us to try our mobile archiving products today.
