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 Isn’t the whole point of a vacation not to work? Why would you have to make a plan not to work?
According to a recent Harris Poll 66% of Americans report working when they take PTO or vacation days. 42% admit to contacting a colleague while on their holiday. Many of us simply cannot unplug from work. Whether self-imposed or an unwritten rule of your workplace, employees are not taking the vacation time they need and deserve. That’s why we’ve put together 5 tips on how to ensure your summer vacation is as enjoyable and work-free as possible. 1. First, make a real commitment to actually taking a vacation. Going through the motions of buying airplane tickets, hotel reservations, and drawing up a basic itinerary doesn’t count. Just because you’ve made plans to not be physically present in the office doesn’t mean you are not mentally and psychologically still wrapped up in your work. The whole point of paid time off is to rejuvenate and recover. You simply can’t be your professional best if you don’t take time off. So get into the mindset and buy into the fact that your holiday is supposed to be time away bringing you back to the workplace as a better, more refreshed person. 2. Ditch the guilt. You can’t relax if you’re worried about what you’re “not” doing. However, it’s easier said than done for some of us to not feel guilty about taking time off. Do what you need to do in order to minimize feelings of guilt. For some of us that may mean rescheduling a vacation to a better time (e.g. not in the middle of a new product launch) or trying to cram in your tasks before you leave. For others, that may simply mean taking a colleague out to lunch to thank them for covering for you ahead of time, or sending them a treat when you come back. 3. Communicate with your colleagues and managers early on about your absence, and don’t just block the time on your calendar. Be sure to send calendar notifications to those you think really need to have this planned into their own work schedule because they will have to cover for you or simply need to be aware. Everyone is busy and it’s hard for people to be aware of anyone else’s schedule. Many of your colleagues want to respect your time off but simply don’t remember or don’t realize that you will be gone. 4. Create an “Out of the Office” auto-reply for your email and your work voicemail. Auto-replies work. Customers and co-workers will understand that you will not respond till you are back from your vacation. They just need a reminder that you are away. In some cases, your boss will be the one that needs a reminder, or it may be your major clients or regular contacts. In other cases, it’s simply telling the team-members who will be covering for you to be proactive in cc:ing you (or not, if you prefer) but not expecting you to respond. Doing this may not reduce the number of emails or voicemails you return to, but it will set expectations and explain why you are not responding for a while. 5. Minimize your “other” work on vacation. Your job responsibilities are not the only kind of work that you should try to minimize on vacation. For many women, care-taking responsibilities surge to the forefront on vacation. Just ask any mother and she will tell you that childcare and family responsibilities on vacation can be so exhausting that it’s more restful to actually return to work. Making a plan to enlist babysitters on vacation, family members, or partners for their support while you're taking time off is something many individuals neglect to do. If you’re like most full-time employed Americans, you work hard. According to a Gallup poll, adults employed full-time work reported working an average of 47 hours per week. You deserve a vacation and they don’t just “happen” without some active thought and planning. For many in the supervision and compliance departments they feel like their jobs are never ending. That is why we have built in automations for our applications. Eagle Eye is always running in the background. You can customize alerts so that if you are out of the office alerts can go to another designated person. From a regulatory point of view, Eagle Eye will give you the full story of what content looked like at the time of review, even if you are out of the office, giving you everything you need to respond to a regulator. SQWatcher will continue to monitor websites, even when you are on vacation. With our easy to use workflows you will be able to go through any changes that occurred while you were away. Our easy to use workflow feature sets SQWatcher apart from the competition. Reviewers can identify what has changed on the website, where changes occurred, and when the changes happened. Our content ignore feature gives you the ability to ignore sections of the site that generate unnecessary reviews like stock tickers, date widgets, and more. Saving you countless hours. It’s just the beginning of June so if you haven’t had the chance to sit down and really plan your summer holiday yet, make sure your vacation plans incorporate these ideas. Then give us a call and let us show you how our applications will help streamline your processes and ease the burden of piling up workloads after your PTO. 3/15/2021
Time is Your Most Valuable Asset There’s a reason why most successful people agree that time is their most valuable asset: Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Unlike money, you can’t earn more time. Here are five ways how I try to get time back during my workday:
In business in general we waste our time by doing what we have always done, the way we have always done it. Getting bogged down in manual processes that could be streamlined through innovation and technology. Oftentimes for compliance, their responsibilities can become overwhelming, frustrating, and stressful because the workload for supervision is continually multiplying. Today’s regulatory environment is one that supports innovation within the financial industry. Regulators encourage financial organizations to rely on technology to effectively and efficiently execute a compliance program. FINRA’s newly formed Office of Financial Innovation is an example of this. For over a decade SiteQuest Compliance has been the partner of choice when it comes to internet supervision and website monitoring. Our automated applications on average cut our clients work load by 80%. Eliminating time-consuming manual processes, automating notifications and reports, and streamlining workflows. How do you want to get back your time? Contact me today, and I will personally show you how our applications will work for you and your firm. One of our clients stated: "The Eagle Eye application has been a force multiplier in my firm’s supervisory scheme. This simple tool has transformed my internet surveillance sweep process from a time-consuming, multi-day enterprise where I view the same search results over and over to a simple process that can be completed in a couple of hours."  It has been over 40 years since significant changes to "The Investment Advisers Act" were adopted. To say that advisors are excited about this recent update is definitely an understatement. With all of the different communication and social media platforms available to advisors, they are eagerly looking forward to sharing testimonials with potential clients hoping to open new doors of opportunities.
Firms and their compliance departments need to take a proactive approach when it comes to addressing these new marketing updates. Testimonials and endorsements still need to be monitored and approved to ensure they are not misleading investors. Firms need to decide what types of statements they are going to approve, what platforms will be utilized, and how registered advisors are going to notify them and gain approval before any endorsement is published. Initially advisors will want to add these testimonials and endorsements to their websites and other online destinations that may or may not be monitored by compliance. Demands on compliance’s time for monitoring and approvals will certainly increase. Additionally, firms need to reevaluate their disclosure policies to ensure that advisors provide notification and documentation of what and where they wish to publish testimonials and endorsements online. Compliance departments should expect to see a large increase in their workload related to internet monitoring and approvals that need to occur. What will compliance do to monitor endorsement and testimonial platforms such as Yelp, Google Reviews, or social media platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter? Advertisements that include third-party ratings will be required to include specific disclosures to prevent them from being misleading. Is compliance waiting for advisors to disclose everything? Are policies based entirely on the honor system? How do you discover your advisor’s online presence, including these new testimonials and endorsements if they are not disclosing them to compliance? While you are forming your compliance strategy and updating policies, procedures and workflows it is important to consider how and what technologies can assist compliance with this increased workload. As the SEC and FINRA are adapting to new technology, compliance departments need to evolve and rely on innovative technology as well to support their job requirements. For over a decade, SiteQuest Compliance has continued to be a trusted partner, supporting compliance and supervision departments with tools that can help meet these increasing demands with regards to compliance and supervision. Our Eagle Eye solution uncovers and supervises your advisors’ online footprint. It discovers social media accounts, websites, blogs, yelp pages, OBAs, DBAs, and online profiles, allowing you to address issues prior to regulatory discovery or examination. Our SQWatcher platform monitors and archives advisor websites including those that may be hosted by non-approved website providers. It creates historical records of these sites, creates workflow events of specific types of changes like new pages, changes to readable text, images, and more with customizable rules to meet your needs. This update to the Investment Advisers Act will require your firm to revise its policies. Our newly launched Policies solution is a powerful tool used to organize, version control, and distribute your firm’s policies and Written Supervisory Procedures (WSPs) to your employees and advisors. Ensuring that your advisors always have access to your most current policies with easy to search features. As your advisors are “Modernizing their Marketing Practices” contact us today to discuss your specific needs and concerns. Let us show you how we can help streamline your workflows to maximize your time, while helping to ensure you don’t miss anything with regards to internet and website supervision and content approval. Sources: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-334 | https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2020/ia-5653.pdf  Whether they wanted to innovate, or a pandemic forced their hand, advisors embraced more digital marketing resources during 2020.
According to InvestmentNews Research, 42% of advisers have used a new digital marketing or technology tool for the first time during 2020, while 88% have expanded the use of at least one tool. The driving force, not surprisingly, was the pandemic, and a stay-at-home environment that forced advisors to find new ways to connect with their customers. As our world has changed over the past year it begs questions like:
Surges in online marketing and communications are not going to level out anytime soon. 80% of surveyed advisers said they would be placing more importance on their digital marketing in the coming year. For nearly a decade, Eagle Eye has provided a platform compliance can rely on when it comes to monitoring the internet activity of their advisors. Eagle Eye discovers social media accounts, websites, blogs, OBAs, DBAs, online profiles, and events that belong to or are about your advisors, allowing you to address issues prior to regulatory discovery or examination. Eagle Eye monitors 50,000+ advisors across our customer base and has automatically alerted compliance supervisors on over 1.2M discoveries that warranted reviews broken down by
Contact us to schedule a time to discuss your internet supervision compliance needs and concerns this New Year. We will show you the solutions that Eagle Eye provides to companies when it comes to internet supervision. Kindly, James Cella, President and CEO james@sqcompliance.com Source: https://www.investmentnews.com/adapt-and-survive-2020-forces-adviser-embrace-of-digital-tools-199923 10/27/2020
Prioritizing Innovation Today A recent McKinsey survey of more than 200 organizations across various industries found that three-fourths believed that the fallout from the pandemic crisis will create significant new opportunities for growth in their industry, and the report shows that historically “companies that invest in innovation through a crisis outperform peers during the recovery.” Most agree that technology and innovation are the keys to “unlocking post-crisis growth”, yet few feel equipped to pursue these new growth opportunities. Of course, seeing the opportunities emerging from this crisis is not the same as being able to seize them. Fewer than 30 percent feel confident that they are prepared to address the changes they see coming. Today’s regulatory environment is one that supports innovation within the financial industry. Regulators encourage financial organizations to rely on technology to effectively and efficiently execute a compliance program. FINRA’s newly formed Office of Financial Innovation is an example of this. As a result, many organizations are taking this as an opportunity to implement new technologies to help streamline their compliance process. Technology is going to help these financial firms navigate and optimize their compliance programs moving forward... BUT many firms do not know where to turn. Our comprehensive understanding of the challenges compliance and supervision department’s face, as well as our proven ability to help firms meet their regulatory obligations is why SiteQuest Compliance has become a trusted partner and solution provider. One of our customers stated that: /
"We needed to come up with a better way to review our advisors' activity on the web because we weren't confident our manual internet searches were identifying everything we needed to supervise. After looking at other solutions, we selected SiteQuest Compliance and their Eagle Eye product. Sitequest Compliance was very accommodating, working closely with us to meet our company's specific needs. We have found our searches to be much more robust now. SiteQuest Compliance continues to be a great partner and is very customer focused!"
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Let us show you how our compliance applications will help support and automate much of your supervision and policy requirements. See first-hand our applications at work. Contact us today for your personalized demo. The subtitle of the referenced McKinsey report says it all: “Prioritizing innovation today is the key to unlocking post-crisis growth.” Progressive compliance leaders who are turning to innovative technology and automation to manage their ever increasing regulatory demands while protecting their organizations and their customers from risk will have a competitive advantage after the crisis. Implementing the inventive applications from SiteQuest Compliance while automating much of your supervision requirements will help ensure a stronger and more trusted firm today, and for years to come. Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/innovation-in-a-crisis-why-it-is-more-critical-than-ever Related Articles: 10/1/2020
What is SQWatcher WHAT IS SQWATCHER?
SQWatcher monitors and archives advisor websites that may be hosted by non-approved website providers. It creates historical records of these sites, creates workflow events of specific types of changes like new pages, changes to readable text, images, and more with customizable rules to meet your needs. WHY DO YOU NEED IT? SQWatcher supports your firm’s adherence to regulatory requirements like FINRA Rules 2210, 3110, 3120, 4511 and 4550 by actively supervising these websites for unapproved changes and providing historical archives of the site. YOUR RETURN ON INVESTMENT SQWatcher’s powerful workflow review processes along with dynamic crawler technology allows your firm to monitor and document dozens to hundreds of websites with relatively few employee hours involved. It reduces compliance and “failure to supervise” risks while demonstrating to regulators, your firm is actively supervising these unique websites in compliance with FINRA and SEC rules. Schedule your personalized demo today!  FINRA recently sent out Regulatory Notice 20-30 regarding an increase in imposter advisor websites being created with malicious intent. These fraudsters are also calling and directing potential customers to use these imposter websites. Additionally these imposters may be using these sites to collect personal information from potential customers with the likely end goal of committing financial fraud. According to FINRA, some common features of these websites include:
FINRA suggests that “Member firms and registered representatives can take steps to identify these pages by conducting periodic web searches using registered representatives’ names.” The potential damage of an Imposter Website could be irreversible. What can you do?
Eagle Eye by SiteQuest Compliance has everything you need to monitor the internet and discover imposter sites and other compliance threats to your firm. Our multi-query processes, lexicon searches and dynamically designed algorithms provides more accurate search results saving you time and automatically alerting you to new search results concerning your registered representatives’ identity. Additionally, our system considers the domain name as it searches for results and scores them for potential reviews. Our easy-to-use workflows allow you to quickly review dozens to hundreds of search results in minutes. Many of our clients have found that with Eagle Eye they cut their workload by 80%. If you do discover an imposter website contact FINRA and the FBI immediately. See for yourself how Eagle Eye will support your compliance and supervision programs to monitor the web and discover these types of issues and more. Contact us today for your personalized demo. Eagle Eye also supports your firm’s adherence to regulatory requirements like FINRA Rules 2210, 3110, 3120, and 3270 by providing supervision of the internet. Read the Entire Regulatory Notice 20-30 8/10/2020
Issues Facing Compliance Officers When speaking with our clients often times they share with us their supervision concerns and challenges. Among them are:
Eagle Eye monitors 50,000+ advisors across our customer base and has automatically alerted compliance supervisors on over 1.2M discoveries that warranted reviews over the past 3 years. This is broken down by:
Solutions That Eagle Eye Provides. Eagle Eye uncovers and supervises your advisors’ online footprint. It discovers social media accounts, websites, blogs, OBAs, DBAs, online profiles, events that belong or are about your advisors, allowing you to address issues prior to regulatory discovery or examination. Eagle Eye supports your firm’s adherence to regulatory requirements such as FINRA Rules 3270, 3110, 2210, and 3120 by providing supervision of the internet. Learn More  Let’s face it, the coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we do business. Most of our industry is working from home, learning to balance conference calls and kids with questions that just can’t wait or dogs that must bark while on a Zoom meeting. We’ve all been there and have our moments.
Other things have changed as well, especially when it comes to marketing and advertising. This is especially true for financial advisors who have lost the ability to connect with clients at events, lunches, in office or at home meetings or simple introductions that come from face-to-face interactions. or years, many advisor’s businesses have primarily depended on these methods to connect with current clients and meet new prospects. Social distancing and stay at home orders have eliminated these options for many advisors who are now exploring new options to prospect and connect with people. So where are they turning? Like everyone else, advisors are turning to technology to increase their online presence with updated profiles while sharing fresh and timely content. I recently spoke to some of our clients about trends they were seeing regarding their advisor’s marketing and advertising behaviors since social distancing and stay home orders began. One compliance manager told me his firm has seen a 30% increase in advertising submissions as well as a significant increase in the use of approved social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Another client told me, “Advisors have ‘downtime’ and are now thinking a lot about marketing.” I followed up on how things have changed for our client as a result. “Don’t get me started on how much social media usage has jumped since this all began!” They have seen an increase of 25% to 30% in usage and a surge in new accounts being created by their advisors. Social Media usage is certainly on the rise. A recent survey showed that 32% of Americans said they have increased the amount of time they are using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Another firm told me that advisors who have typically shied away from social media, online profiles, websites, and other marketing technologies are now diving in for the first time. I was told, “Their (advisors) traditional lead generation tools aren’t available anymore. They now have time and are focusing on new ways to build their business.” Additionally, our clients are seeing a big increase in advertising submissions for recordings from Zoom/online meetings. Advisors are continually seeking guidance on additional options for communicating and marketing to the public. This all presents an increasing challenge in supervision and compliance, especially when there are growing limitations on human resources. That’s where our Eagle Eye technology comes in. Eagle Eye helps our clients uncover their advisors’ web presence, locating social media accounts, websites, articles, profiles, videos, OBA’s and more. Eagle Eye creates automated documentation of what has been reviewed, who did the review, and what the website looked like at the time of review, giving our clients and regulators a complete picture of the process. They use our system to discover and “clean up” situations where the use of these sites was done without approvals or monitoring in place. Another one of our clients shared with us that, “Thanks to Eagle Eye, it is helping me identify and address issues before they are brought to my attention by a regulator.” With our industry evolving, SiteQuest Compliance is a preferred partner when it comes to internet supervision and website management. Contact us today for your personalized demo where we can discuss your supervision concerns and see for yourself how Eagle Eye can support your internet supervision requirements.  This spring FINRA announced the formation of the Office of Financial Innovation that will serve as a central point of coordination for issues related to financial innovations by FINRA member firms, particularly new uses of financial technology.
The goal in mind to further enhance FINRA’s ability to identify, understand and foster financial innovation in a manner that strengthens investor protection and market integrity. With 10 years of experience supporting our partners in their supervision and compliance with FINRA, SiteQuest Compliance is pleased about the dedication to financial innovation. SiteQuest Compliance has a long standing tradition of being a thought-leader. Working side-by-side with customers as we develop and improve our supervision applications to meet their needs. As more and more regulation burden is being put upon financial firms, SiteQuest Compliance is stepping up and serving as a trusted partner. Learn more about our applications. Eagle Eye is the first of its kind application that uncovers and supervises your advisors’ online footprint. It discovers social media accounts, websites, blogs, OBAs, DBAs, online profiles, and events that belong to or are about your advisors, allowing you to address issues prior to regulatory discovery or examination. SQWatcher stands for our SiteQuest "Watcher". Our SQWatcher application monitors and archives advisor websites that may be hosted by non-approved website providers. It creates historical records of these sites, creates workflow events of specific types of changes like new pages, changes to readable text, images, and more with customizable rules to meet your needs. Policies organizes, manages and delivers your firms policies and WSPs. Our Policies application provides a clean, easy-to-use, easy-to-search and up-to-date experience for your advisors. Policies brings all of your procedures, policies, WSPs and other documentation into one place that can be accessed on both a desktop and mobile devices. Our customers have referred to our applications as “force multipliers” that exponentially expand their search and supervision capabilities. Firms are able to identify and address issues before they are brought to their attention by a regulator. “Innovation continues to pose new opportunities and challenges for our member firms and the broader financial services industry, and it is essential that we as regulators keep pace,” said FINRA President and CEO Robert W. Cook. With the even increasing trend for registered advisors to utilize technology to grow their online presence with updated profiles while sharing fresh and timely content. It is paramount that supervisors have support and a partner to help them with their ever increasing responsibilities. Let us show you how we can help. Contact us today to discuss your supervision challenges. Together we can lay out a plan to keep pace with technology innovations. Source: https://www.finra.org/media-center/news-releases/2019/finra-forms-office-financial-innovation-announces-haimera-workie-head |
About James CellaJames Cella is the President of a growing and innovative compliance technology provider called SiteQuest Compliance. James is a customer-centric individual and focuses on building and sustaining positive and lasting relationship with his clients and partners. James and his family are "super fans" of University of Utah Football and have attended nearly every home game since 2002. Go Utes! Archives
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