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Your firm's recordkeeping obligations extend beyond signed contracts and financial statements.
Client text messages, emailed approvals, and recorded conversations can also document business decisions and instructions.
However, employees create these records through different channels.
When a regulator requests correspondence or a client disputes an instruction, your firm must retrieve the relevant records and demonstrate their authenticity. Records scattered among individual mailboxes, mobile devices, and departmental systems can complicate that process.
The best solutions for maintaining compliance with recordkeeping laws address how your firm preserves, manages, and retrieves business information.
Below, we discuss seven solution categories, beginning with business call and text archiving, and the capabilities to assess before selecting a particular service.
Table of Contents
1. Business call and text archiving solutions
3. Document management systems
4. Records management software
5. Electronic communications archiving platforms
6. Immutable storage solutions
7. Legal hold and eDiscovery software
8. How to choose the right recordkeeping solution
9. Get a compliant solution for business calls and texts
Business call and text archiving solutions
Business call and text archiving solutions preserve client communication conducted through your firm's approved phone channels.
They allow authorized reviewers to retrieve records of instructions, recommendations, and other business discussions.
For example, a client might request an account change via text, then confirm the details over the phone. Preserving both exchanges, where recording is required or permitted under your policies, gives your firm a more complete account of the instruction.
Call recording and text archiving can contribute to your firm's compliance with SEC Rule 17a-4 and FINRA Rule 4511 for record preservation, as well as to supervisory reviews under FINRA Rule 3110.
For designated taping firms, recording also addresses obligations under FINRA Rule 3170.
Meanwhile, SEC-registered investment advisers can use text archiving to preserve specified written communications under Advisers Act Rule 204-2.
What to look for
Evaluate the service against your firm's recording, preservation, and review requirements:
- Automatic call recording: Configure recording for the business calls identified in your policies.
- Complete text records: Verify preservation of incoming and outgoing messages, attachments, participant details, and timestamps.
- Protected retention: Establish how the archive prevents unauthorized alteration or premature deletion.
- Search and export: Confirm that authorized reviewers can retrieve complete conversations and produce usable records.
- Access after employee departures: Determine how your firm retains historical records when an employee's line is canceled or reassigned.
Also, ask the provider to explain which communications are archived and how administrators identify collection failures.
Meet iPlum, a mobile compliance solution for financial professionals
iPlum’s Mobile Compliance Line gives advisors a dedicated business number on their existing smartphones. Your firm can designate that number for client communication and apply recording and archiving procedures to the business line.
The iPlum Enterprise plan provides several relevant capabilities, including:
- Automatic call recording: Records incoming and outgoing business calls through the configured iPlum line.
- Bidirectional text archiving: Preserves incoming and outgoing business texts for subsequent review.
- Long-term archiving: Provides 10-year archiving on active accounts, subject to the service’s terms.
- WORM storage: Protects archived communication against alteration and deletion.
- Recording announcements: Allows an announcement at the beginning of calls. Your firm should configure its notice and consent process for the relevant jurisdictions.
- Recording playback and downloads: Allows authorized users to review recordings and download audio files through the portal.
In addition, iPlum provides administrator functions for managing users, password policies, and audit logs.
For your firm, these capabilities deliver the infrastructure you need for regulated mobile communication.
Email archiving solutions
Email archiving solutions preserve business messages separately from employees' everyday mailbox activity.
They are useful when your business needs historical correspondence after an employee deletes an email, changes roles, or leaves.
For example, a former employee might have negotiated a customer's payment terms. Two years later, a dispute could turn on an attachment and the approval that followed it. An archive should let an authorized reviewer retrieve both.
That said, mailbox storage and backups serve different purposes.
A mailbox lets employees send and receive email. A backup, on the other hand, generally provides recovery after data loss. An archive should provide deliberate retention and searchable historical records.
What to evaluate
Ask vendors to demonstrate:
- Automatic collection of relevant incoming, outgoing, and internal emails.
- Preservation of attachments, sender details, recipients, and timestamps.
- Retention that continues after mailbox closure.
- Search using dates, addresses, subjects, and message content.
- Export of messages in usable formats.
- Legal holds that suspend scheduled deletion for relevant correspondence.
In addition, ask how the service treats shared mailboxes, forwarded messages, encrypted attachments, and employee aliases. Missing an address or mailbox can leave part of a business exchange outside the archive.
Document management systems
Document management systems organize working files such as contracts, invoices, applications, policies, and signed forms.
They are particularly useful when employees create, revise, approve, and retrieve documents throughout a business process.
Imagine a supplier contract that goes through several drafts before being signed. Six months later, the parties amended their payment terms. Your business needs to distinguish the original drafts, the executed agreement, and the signed amendment.
A shared folder alone does not establish those relationships. Employees can use inconsistent filenames, overwrite files, or save the final version in a separate location.
What to evaluate
Look for:
- Classification: Assign document types, client names, account references, and relevant dates.
- Version history: Identify changes and retrieve earlier versions where required.
- Approval records: Establish who approved a document and when.
- Access permissions: Limit who can read, revise, or delete sensitive files.
- Search: Retrieve documents using their content and assigned information.
Metadata deserves particular attention. A filename describes a file, but additional information establishes its context and makes it distinguishable from similar records.
The National Archives explains this role in its discussion of metadata in electronic records management.
However, document management features do not automatically establish compliant retention. Ask how the system designates an official record, restricts later changes, and applies disposal rules.
Records management software
Records management software applies preservation and disposal rules to business records throughout their lifecycle.
It addresses a different question from everyday document management: how should your business retain an official record after creating or receiving it?
For example, a contract’s retention period could begin upon the agreement's expiration. An employment record could follow a schedule tied to departure. Applying the same countdown from the file creation date would produce the wrong result.
The applicable period depends on the record, jurisdiction, and legal obligation. Consequently, your business must establish its retention schedule before translating it into software settings.
What to evaluate
A suitable system should let you:
- Classify records under defined retention categories.
- Assign schedules to those categories.
- Start retention from specified dates or business events.
- Restrict changes to designated official records.
- Suspend disposal when a preservation obligation applies.
- Route eligible records for disposal review.
- Document authorized destruction.
These functions reflect the broader record lifecycle. For example, the National Archives’ electronic records management requirements address maintenance, use, disposal, transfer, metadata, and reporting for federal agencies.
For a business evaluating software, the useful lesson is that storage represents only part of the job.
Here, you need to ask vendors to demonstrate a record that traces the movement from creation through retention to eventual disposal. Then test an exception, such as an unresolved dispute that prevents deletion.
Electronic communications archiving platforms
Electronic communications archiving platforms preserve business exchanges from several types of communication services.
They suit firms whose employees use email, workplace chat, social messaging, voice, or video for business.
The distinction from a dedicated call-and-text archive is in scope. A phone archive addresses communication through specified phone channels.
A broader platform collects records from multiple approved services through configured connections.
For example, a customer conversation could begin with a social message, continue via email, and conclude with an internal discussion about approval. Your firm needs to identify the relevant records from those separate sources.
What to evaluate
Start with your actual communication inventory. Then examine:
- Channel compatibility: Verify the specific services, account types, and features the archive can collect.
- Conversation context: Check threads, replies, participant identities, attachments, and timestamps.
- Changes and deletions: Determine which edits or deleted messages the connection preserves.
- Collection monitoring: Establish how administrators discover interruptions or expired permissions.
- Review workflows: Test assignment, escalation, and documentation of supervisory reviews.
- Export quality: Confirm that exported records retain their meaning outside the archive.
Do not assume that a connection collects all activity available within an application. Private messages, voice notes, reactions, and disappearing content can require separate evaluation.
In addition, distinguish preservation from supervision. An archive stores records; your firm’s review procedures determine who examines them and what action follows.
Financial firms should assess these functions against their specific obligations. FINRA’s books-and-records information explains the role of preserved records in regulatory examinations.
Immutable storage solutions
Immutable storage solutions prevent stored records from being overwritten or deleted during an enforced retention period. They address record integrity, particularly where your business must demonstrate that preserved information remains authentic.
One model is write-once, read-many, or WORM. After the system writes a record, retention safeguards restrict alteration and deletion for the configured period.
However, WORM is not a universal requirement for all business records.
For broker-dealer electronic records, the SEC permits either WORM or a qualifying audit-trail alternative. The latter must permit reconstruction of an original record after modification or deletion.
What to evaluate
Ask the provider:
- Who can configure retention periods?
- Can an administrator shorten an existing lock?
- What happens when an account closes?
- How does the system verify record integrity?
- Can your business retrieve records throughout the required period?
Also, distinguish immutability from encryption. Encryption protects data against unauthorized reading. Immutability restricts changes and deletion. A service can provide one feature and lack the other.
Legal hold and eDiscovery software
Legal hold and eDiscovery software preserve relevant information and manage its review during disputes, investigations, and litigation.
Routine retention schedules determine when records reach their scheduled disposal date. A legal hold suspends deletion of records subject to a preservation obligation, even if the retention period has ended.
For example, correspondence scheduled for deletion could concern a developing contract dispute. Your business needs a process to identify the relevant information and suspend disposal.
The Federal Judicial Center explains that Rule 37(e) addresses failures to preserve electronically stored information that should have been preserved in anticipation of litigation.
What to evaluate
Look for functions that let authorized users:
- Identify relevant employees, accounts, dates, and record sources.
- Issue preservation notices and track acknowledgments.
- Apply holds to relevant information.
- Document collection and review activity.
- Search, review, and export responsive records.
- Release holds through an authorized process.
Be sure to confirm that deletion stops in the affected systems and that employee departures do not interrupt access.
Also, evaluate how the software interacts with existing archives. Your legal review process should preserve the relationship between exported records and their original sources.
Once a hold ends, review the remaining obligations before resuming disposal. Another hold or retention requirement could still apply.
How to choose the right recordkeeping solution
When choosing a solution to maintain compliance, start with a record inventory. Identify what your business creates, where employees create it, and which requirements govern its retention.
Then assess prospective services against a written checklist:
- Record types: Can the service preserve the information you need?
- Retention: Can it apply the appropriate periods and triggering events?
- Integrity: How does it protect originals or document changes?
- Retrieval: Can you produce complete, readable exports?
- Access: Who can review records and change settings?
- Continuity: What happens after employee departures or cancellations?
- Cost: What charges apply to storage, integrations, holds, and exports?
Ask for a demonstration using representative records from your business.
It is worth noting that several categories can overlap within a service.
Therefore, buy against verified functions rather than category names. Document any remaining requirements and assign responsibility for them before approving the system for business use.
Get a compliant solution for business calls and texts
Your firm should be able to produce client communication records when an examiner requests them or a dispute demands review.
Personal phone numbers complicate that responsibility when business conversations remain outside your approved archive.
iPlum gives your advisors a dedicated business number on their existing smartphones, with automatic call recording, text archiving, and long-term retention through its Enterprise plan.
Your firm can establish an approved mobile channel and make the resulting records available for authorized review.
Rather than leaving employees to decide where client conversations belong, give them a business line governed by your firm's procedures.
Get started with iPlum and establish a calling and texting channel built for your firm's record preservation and supervision.
