Tag Archives: Compliance

FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 18

Ethan Eden, founder and CEO of Market76

Ethan Eden, founder and CEO of Market76

This week’s FPPad On Air guest is Ethan Eden, founder and CEO of Market76, and we’ll cover what’s new in CRM software and how his company’s product is different from the traditional systems with which advisers are familiar.

You can view the broadcast on the FPPad On Air page beginning at 4:15pm ET or get the link through my Twitter feed.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

RegEd Expands Social Media Archiving and Surveillance Solution with a Content Library and Multiple Lexicons Continuing its Leadership in Compliance Technology from Arkovi.com

[Here are two solutions to the age-old question on social media: what should you post, and how do you keep posts compliant? First, RegEd now offers a library of pre-approved content suitable for social media (for those of you who constantly have a broker-dealer staring over your social media shoulder) and a broader range of words and phrases the program uses to scan social medial posts for potential compliance issues. What’s not to like?] RegEd, the leader of compliance technology in the financial services industry, announced today two major features, the social media content library and multiple-lexicons, as part of their Social Media Archiving and Surveillance solution, powered by Arkovi.

12 key events of 2012 that rocked the RIA technology landscape, Part 1 from RIABiz.com

[In what essentially represents a top 12 list (Part 1 has 6 items) of tech related RIABiz stories of 2012, contributor Lisa Shidler recaps some of the major and minor trends that will no doubt play a growing role in how advisers manage and grow their business.]  Our identification of big technology events that happened in the past year starts with Salesforce, Junxure, Techfi, NetX360, IAS and MoneyGuidePro. As we move toward number one in our second installment, the names in many cases become less familiar, not more so, which indicates just how fast RIA technology is moving.

How to hide LinkedIn Endorsements on the new LinkedIn profile design

Financial advisers now have two easy ways to hide LinkedIn Endorsements and reduce compliance risks.

Several weeks ago I raised concern over the new LinkedIn profile design, as there appeared to be no way to hide LinkedIn Endorsements from your public profile (see: New LinkedIn profiles raise compliance concerns as there appears to be no way to hide endorsements).

This was especially problematic for my audience of financial advisers, as FINRA and SEC regulations prohibit the use of information that can be construed as a testimonial.

Fortunately, LinkedIn’s new profile design now offers two options to hide endorsements from your public profile. Watch the 2:00 screencast below to see how it’s done.

(click to watch on YouTube)

ArchiveSocial delivers authentic social media capture for financial advisers

When you get asked by the SEC, FINRA, or your broker-dealer for the last six months of your social media posts, what are you going to provide? How will your auditor make heads or tails out of your social media posts if they look nothing like the ones posted on public sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter?

Anil Chawla, founder and CEO of ArchiveSocial

One company wants to simplify the way social media messages are captured and displayed, giving advisers peace of mind knowing their archives can be reviewed easily by auditors.

That company is ArchiveSocial, and I recently connected with ArchiveSocial founder and CEO Anil Chawla to learn more about how they capture social media updates in what Chawla calls their “natural, authentic form.”

Click here to learn more about ArchiveSocial’s solutions for financial services.

In the podcast below, hear Chawla discuss the drawbacks of several existing solutions from vendors, the benefits of a “carbon copy” approach to archives, and an overview of ArchiveSocial pricing.

If you decide to purchase a full-year subscription, you can save 10% by using the code FPPAD12 (not an affiliate code).

New LinkedIn profiles raise compliance concerns as there appears to be no way to hide endorsements

LinkedIn rolled out its new Endorsements feature several months ago to all users. Since then, financial advisers have been worried about publicly displaying Endorsements on their profile, since they can be construed as testimonials which are strictly prohibited by FINRA and the SEC.

Fortunately, hiding Endorsements from one’s public profile is a fairly straightforward process (see: How to hide endorsements from your LinkedIn profile)

But now, LinkedIn is slowly rolling out redesigned profile pages worldwide that appears to remove the “Hide Endorsement” functionality.

Watch the screencast below to see a sample of the new profile design rolled out to one adviser’s account and how the “Hide Endorsement” button is missing.

I’ve reached out to LinkedIn for comment and have not yet received a reply. I’ll update this post accordingly.

(click here to watch on YouTube)

FPPad Bits and Bytes for November 2

Don’t forget to watch today’s broadcast with Bart Wisniowski of AdvisorWesbites.com on Google+. It starts at 4:15pm ET/1:15pm PT. Head over to my Google+ profile and click the “Join Hangout” button at that time.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Smarsh Launches Archiving & Compliance for Yammer from Smarsh.com

[(see Advisers using Yammer can enhance collaboration without sacrificing compliance for a podcast of this story) Yammer is a collaboration tool that provides an interface similar to the Facebook News Feed for your business. I’ve been recommending it in my Transformative Technology presentation to advisers for a year now as a way to supplant stand-up meetings in your office that can disrupt productivity and waste time. Now Smarsh has an archiving solution to capture and retain Yammer activity for both client-related and in-house communication.]  Smarsh®, the managed service leader in secure, innovative and reliable email archiving compliance solutions, today announced the launch of Archiving & Compliance for Yammer. Developed in partnership with Yammer, the hosted solution enables organizations to capture, preserve, search, supervise and produce Yammer files and communications in support of compliance, e-discovery and recordkeeping initiatives.

Schwab and Advent Software forge (historic) agreement — mostly for the good of Black Diamond users for now from RIABiz.com

[It’s nice that Schwab lets us know that an integration with Advent and Black Diamond is coming, but *when* it will actually be available to advisers is still anyone’s guess. If you’ve read our past stories on integrations from Fidelity and TD Ameritrade Institutional, you know that Schwab is playing catch up relative to their competition. So view this announcement as one way the industry’s biggest custodian is trying to fill the gap.] Schwab Advisor Services chose Advent Software as its first major portfolio management software partner for its grand ecosystem of software — Schwab Intelligent Integration.

PODCAST: Advisers using Yammer can enhance collaboration without sacrificing compliance

Advisers experimenting with enterprise social networks now have an option to solve their compliance needs.

Sam Kolbert-Hyle, vice president of business development and strategic initiatives at Smarsh, Inc.

There are a host of new collaboration tools on the market today, all attempting to harness the promise of an enterprise social network.

Services like Chatter, Jive, and Yammer allow you to create your own internal network for your business that resembles many of the popular networks like Facebook and Twitter.

These services offer many new ways to work with colleagues and review important news at a glance, but advisers must address one persistent complication of any new technology: compliance.

Until now, there have been few methods available to capture and archive content posted on enterprise social networks, which is required for all communications related to client service.

Earlier this week, Smarsh, the email and social media compliance provider, announced the launch of Archiving and Compliance for Yammer, the popular enterprise social network.

For more information on Archiving and Compliance for Yammer, I spoke with Sam Kolbert-Hyle, vice president of business development and strategic initiatives at Smarsh.

Listen to the podcast below to learn how these collaboration tools can now be used without sacrificing compliance.

How to hide endorsements from your LinkedIn profile

Advisers must hide LinkedIn Endorsements to avoid compliance violations

Update 01/21/2013! LinkedIn is rolling out completely new profile designs to users, changing the way Endorsements are managed. Go read How to hide LinkedIn Endorsements on the new LinkedIn profile design now and watch the screencast reflecting the new changes.

As a financial adviser, you’re well aware that you can’t use client testimonials in any of your marketing materials. SEC and FINRA regulations prohibit the use of client testimonials (see: Adviser Use of LinkedIn May Violate SEC Rules).

LinkedIn’s latest feature called Endorsements, opens up another issue for financial advisers with LinkedIn profiles. Anyone can visit an adviser’s LinkedIn profile and endorse specific skills and expertise. Considering the broad language against client testimonials, allowing such endorsements should be avoided.

So how do you remove or disable Endorsements from showing up on your profile?

In the screencast below, I walk you though two ways you can prevent Endorsements from showing up on your public profile.

Watch the screencast now and hide any public endorsements on your own profile to avoid triggering compliance violations.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for July 6

One thing a week split by a holiday does is drastically reduce the amount of news you need to know. So enjoy a short Bits and Bytes update today and get on with your weekend plans.

First, be sure you get the checklist of 10 things you should ask before signing on with a cloud service provider. Read How to Stay Safe When Using the Cloud from the Journal of Financial Planning.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Six More Designate Erado as Their Social Media Compliance Provider from Erado.com

[Thankfully advisers have multiple vendors from which to choose for their social media compliance needs. Here, Erado announces six more engagements, though I might need to dig into the claim that they’re the “nation’s leading service.” Time for a face off article!] Erado, the nation’s leading service in SaaS based archiving of electronic communications, formally announces its exclusive agreement to provide social media compliance services to Soundmark Wealth Management LLC, Capitol Securities Management Inc., St. Croix Advisors LLC, Strategic Financial Services, Martin Wolf Securities, and Providence Financial & Insurance Services Inc.

‘Mint For Investments’ Startup SigFig Goes Mobile With New iPhone And Android Apps from TechCrunch.com

[SigFig is another one of the growing “robo adviser” online advice platforms for consumers and investors (see Competing Against “Robo Advisors:” Delivering Advice in a New World from T3 2012). Now they have an attractive mobile app that allows users to view all of their aggregated account information on their mobile device.] SigFig lets users connect all their various investment accounts — including 401k plans, IRAs, etc. — onto a single dashboard.

Smarsh releases Web Archiving, an automated solution to archive adviser websites

New automated tool will help registered professionals eliminate tedious manual processes to meet FINRA and SEC requirements.

In a press release today, Smarsh, Inc., the Portland, Ore.-based company best known for email archiving, announced a new solution to help satisfy archiving and record-keeping requirements when it comes to adviser websites.

Web Archiving is the new solution, and Smarsh created a short explainer video to describe what it does, embedded below for your convenience.

(click to view on YouTube)

Web Archiving is designed to automatically crawl and capture the contents of an adviser’s website. In addition to archiving the full text of all website pages, Web Archiving also captures embedded media such as video, social media feeds, slideshows, and more.

According to the solution feature list, archived pages are rendered in their original format, preserving the “look and feel” of the website page as it originally appeared on the adviser’s site.

“Today’s Web is not static text, but rather an immersive multi-sensory experience. This complicates the critical need for organizations of all kinds to keep an accurate, uncompromised record of what has been published to the world via the Web,” said Stephen Marsh, Smarsh founder and CEO, in the release.

Without an automated tool, advisers may be forced to print individual website pages to PDF files and save them in a compliance file. This is a tedious, time-consuming process at best, and it doesn’t address media like embedded video or slideshows.

Website archiving is not very crowded with vendors. Alternate solutions can be found within the Advisor Websites platform (though an adviser’s website will need to be hosted with the company), Advisor Products (again, website hosting required), Arkovi, and a few others.

[Video Spotlight] Sarah Carter of Actiance at FinovateSpring 2012

Another presenter at FinovateSpring 2012 that should be familiar to FPPad readers is Actiance. The Belmont, Calif.-based company provides compliance solutions for regulated financial professionals in the form of its Socialite Engage platform.

Here’s Sarah Carter from Actiance telling what Socialite Engage can do for advisers and gives a bonus tip on what day and time is best to post social media updates.

(click to view on YouTube)