FINRA’s Social Media Guidelines

The universe of financial services professionals is buzzing today after the release of long awaited guidance on using social media while being under the regulatory watch of FINRA. This encompasses any securities registered persons and the broker dealers they work with. We share the optimistic perspective that AdvisorTweets.com presents.

The clarifications are clearly what most expected - and very similar to how most other advertising, client correspondence and communications with the public have been handled.

• Treating social media similar to email communications is the approach - archive, supervise, audit, report
• Forge a clear policy around which social media sites can be used, how and by whom
• Have a secure archive of all communications on social media sites approved for use by your firm
• Have a realistic strategy for monitoring and supervision based on your archiving above
• Put controls in place to audit your users as to following policies and for policing those who run afoul of these guidelines

Since our launch at Arkovi we have believed in the model of flexibility, integration and ease of use. Thus our design enables us to do things like:

• Enable users to interact with social media communities while archiving and aggregating the content they advance or create, be it blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the numerous other social sites
• Provide a dashboard for individuals and business to many one or many users across social media platforms
• Export archives to other service providers who may already provide dashboard surveillance for companies

We look forward to discussing our solution with financial professionals who need to security of an archive that is auditable while wanting the freedom to participate in the social conversation. Thanks for reading!

Tags: Archiving, Presentations