Just start to say the word compliance at your firm, and you might hear a collective “sigh” and see shoulders start sagging. Following all of the regulations required of your RIA is just like adding some veggies to your meals. You don’t necessarily do it because you want to, but because if you don’t, it’ll come back to haunt you later.
The thick, bone-in, juicy steak part of being an advisor – the reason you got into this business – is to serve your clients and support them well. But you don’t just have to stomach the same helping of veggies forever. You need technology to help get some of that burden of compliance off your plate and on as close to autopilot as you can get it so you and your team can focus on serving clients.
Let’s take a look at how to simplify compliance with secure document management in your CRM, including when it comes to client communications, internal documents, and more.
7 Key Takeaways of SEC Rule 17a-4
Before we dive into the meat of document storage and management, we should begin at Rule 17a-4, which allows for and governs the storage of documents in an electronic format.
Here are seven bread-and-butter rules to keep in mind when you are wanting to implement secure and compliant document storage with your CRM:
Unaltered data
You must preserve records in a non-rewritable, non-erasable format for at least six years. This is often referred to as “write once, read many,” or WORM.
Ensured integrity
The system you use “must verify the quality and accuracy of the storage media recording process automatically.” This ensures the integrity of the records both during the initial recording and any post-recording sessions.
Serialized and indexed
You must have the ability to locate a specific record quickly by serializing and indexing the original and any duplicates. You will want your system to assign a unique identifier for each record as well as a time and date of the recording for each record.
Easily downloaded
The system must allow you to download records easily.
Duplicated elsewhere
You must have a duplicate copy stored somewhere else so if the original data is lost, damaged, or inaccessible, you have a backup. The duplicate records also must be serialized and indexed the exact same way as the originals.
Separate indexes
The duplicate copies have to be stored separately from the original copy of each index. While this may seem redundant, it isn’t. You most certainly don’t want to lose the ability to search the data should you lose the storage of data. And both the original and duplicate indexes have to be preserved for the same time period required for the records.
Audit system
The system must leave an audit trail to track any and all activity of the records and indexes. The audit trail should show exactly when and who modified any of the records.
Client Information and Communications
Now, just as the amending of Rule 17a-4 in 1997 to allow for electronic record keeping suggests, both investors and RIAs want a more modern process when it comes to investment. And this is even more true today.
For advisors, that means getting rid of the hours of hand-cramp-inducing paperwork you used to require of clients for onboarding and really any sort of change, which also meant lots of morale-breaking manual entry for you.
The big firms and broker-dealers have a leg up when it comes to this, so you can’t afford to lag behind.
But you also can’t stop there. You must also provide secure, compliant storage and transmission of their personal and financial information.
With technology like Skience Safe, advisors can set up event-based and automated storage rules; have financial documents from digital signature programs, such as DocuSign, automatically indexed; and set household documents from managed account programs, like Envestnet, to be automatically stored using event-triggered or time-triggered workflows.
Skience Safe can also automatically upload and index Salesforce notes and attachments. This all means you won’t have to mess with links or copying from one system to another (not that you ever would, right?)
The bottom line is clients likely won’t care how you store their data until it’s been compromised. And by that point, you’ve lost their trust, and you’re likely headed for trouble with the SEC.
So give yourself and your clients peace of mind (and keep the SEC at bay) with the right document storage solution.
Internal Document Storage
This is the digital age. No more thinking of a file cabinet, the basement, your desktop, or the F:, S:, X:, or whatever letter drive you have designated on your server when you see “internal document storage.” Get that out of your brain and delete it from long-term memory (see what we did there?).
For one, those are outdated. More importantly, they aren’t compliant.
Sure, there are cloud storage solutions like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and OneDrive. But none of those are wealth management-specific, adhering to the stringent security needs of advisors.
Plus, they often end up being too complicated for you, your partner, or your entire team to use in a compliant way.
Typically, the result of using those solutions is a mish-mash of multiple structures and people just dropping files wherever makes sense to them. That’s enough to give your designated CCO an ulcer.
Instead, using an industry-leading tech solution like Skience Safe to not only meet compliance regulations but also automate processes can save your team hours of time and ensure all files are exactly where they need to be – all without hounding your not-so-tech-savvy partner for the 194th time that week on where something should go.
All. The. Things.
Of course, secure document storage isn’t just about client data and communication. You also need to save everything going on in your firm – from trade blotters and trade reviews to your entire team’s license information.
Sure, you could keep these things in other systems like a trading platform, but keeping data across multiple applications introduces friction and makes it more likely you’ll miss something, your team won’t remember where something lives, or it will go missing just in time for you to get audited by the SEC.
Having one true system and process ensures the integrity of all of your data and documents – and it means fewer headaches when it comes to supervisory and internal compliance reviews.
Simplify Compliance for Your Document Storage
Discover more about transforming your document storage into a secure, compliant, and automated solution with Skience Safe.