3 Ways Financial Advisors Can Support Regulatory Compliance

Three financial industry experts hit the road recently to speak about staying compliant despite the financial industry’s constantly changing regulations . Tom Giachetti , Chair of the Securities Practice Group at Stark & Stark and the “Compliance Coach” in Investment Advisor Magazine, was joined by Greg Friedman , President of Private Ocean and CRM Software, makers of Junxure and ClientView , and Tim Welsh , leading industry consultant in the three city tour in Newport, CA, Seattle, WA and Denver, CO.

Regaled by Tom Giachetti, the industry’s only celebrity compliance attorney, financial advisors soon learned which areas regulators are focused on drilling down on in compliance programs:

  • Ensure Policies and Procedures are up to date and make sense to the business. “Don’t buy canned documents,” said Giachetti, “those are typically one-size-fits-all and don’t accurately reflect what you do in your business. Thus, you need to read them and customize them for your service offering.”
  • Be prepared for regulatory audits. Greg Friedman demonstrated how he was using technology to easily satisfy compliance requirements and prepare for regulatory audits. “Being able to gather the requested information was made easy because we had a fully documented process for how we work with clients in our CRM,” said Friedman. “When combined with ECM integration , we are able to provide the auditors all of the information on a DVD that’s organized to their specific requests. What once took weeks, now takes hours.”
  • Automate compliance. Tim Welsh highlighted various industry and technology trends that create new opportunities without sacrificing compliance, including the use of social media, ECM (Document Management) and mobile . “Laserfiche ECM provid es the integrative middleware to automate multiple business processes such as the compliance approval of new accounts, enabling advisors to simplify and streamline these critical procedures.”
  • Interested in learning more about ensuring compliance with an integration between Junxure CRM and Laserfiche ECM ? Discover how Wealth Enhancement Group (WEG) integrates both technologies to reduce costs (to the order of $450,000 worth of paper annually), ensure information security and stay compliant with SEC and FINRA regulations.