I’M SURE I HAVE SOME COMPLIANCE GAPS, BUT DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START...

​It can be very challenging for financial firms to search, monitor, and document​ ​their ​advisor's web presence and registered websites without interrupting day-to-day business demands and operations. Yet failure to do so can leave ​exposed compliance gaps unaddressed and open your firm up to fines and disciplinary actions from regulatory agencies. Common compliance gaps often include improperly documented or improperly enforced policies and procedures, insufficient evidence of a WSP, undisclosed OBAs and social media accounts, as well as rogue advisor websites. Many firms know that they have gaps, but they don’t know where to start.

FINRA publishes a monthly disciplinary report with actions and fines against firms and individuals. One of the most common fines involves undisclosed OBAs. Currently, many firms work on the “honor system” with hopes that their employees with be completely honest and disclose everything required. Unfortunately, this honor system doesn’t always work. How are you to find out if your advisors have an undisclosed OBA? That is where Eagle Eye can help you close this gap with our deep web searching technology that quickly cut through the clutter of the web and bring to your attention relevant results when monitoring your registered reps.

Do you know if your advisors have disclosed all of their social media accounts? In a recent random sampling of 10 employees from a prospective client, our Eagle Eye solution found serious violations with three of the advisors including several OBAs and social media accounts that were never disclosed. This is a typical compliance gap for many firms. Is this one your firm is facing as well?

Are you sure that your firm is monitoring all of your advisors online advertising? Do you have a process in place that is easy to demonstrate to a regulator? Do you even know if they are producing advertising that you are unaware of? This could be another compliance gap your firm is facing.

In addition to all of the supervision regulations, you need to prove that your firm has WSPs in place to help document all of the actions your firm is taking to monitor web presence. For many firms, this turns into another compliance gap they need to address.

You have a broker-dealer responsibility to monitor every website that your advisors' utilize for business purposes. Many times, advisors want to have their own website to help them stand out among the thousands of other financial advisor websites out there. How are you monitoring these websites? Are you notified of every change automatically so that it can be approved? If not, here is another compliance gap you might be facing, there has been an increase in fines imposed by FINRA regarding website monitoring. SiteQuest Compliance's SQWatcher program is an easy to use solution that will quickly help you fill this gap at a fraction of the cost of a fine.

Then to complete all of this monitoring you need to document all of your findings in an organized manner. Many times this is the last step in the compliance process and yet it can become one of the largest compliance gaps for a firm. Our automated documentation features found as part of our programs are detailed and searchable. We provide you with all of the information you need to respond to a regulator.

SiteQuest Compliance offers programs, support, and experience to help you bridge these gaps and respond to a regulator. A firm that is able to demonstrate compliance with tangible evidence will mitigate risks, such as costly regulatory fines, and be better prepared for unannounced visits from regulatory agencies.

Contact us today and talk to us about any gaps you need help addressing.

Recently I was told by a longtime client that our customer service is “old fashioned, but in a good way”. Perhaps that is the last thing a technology company wants to hear.
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As president of SiteQuest Compliance, I reflected over what our client meant in that statement. We do pride ourselves on the fact that when you call our office with questions or in need of technical support, that your call is quickly answered by a live person. We don’t force our clients to use service tags, make them navigate unhelpful phone trees, or waste time waiting in queues listening to mundane hold music. We are there for our customers, with a readiness and willingness to meet and exceed their expectations. 

What controls does your firm have in place to aid you in discovering DBAs if your advisors are not disclosing them?​

“DBAs and Communications With the Public” were one of the findings highlighted. FINRA continues to find that many registered representatives are not compliant with FINRA Rule 3270 in trying to conceal their outside business activities. ​

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:
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• Using the registered representative’s name as the domain name for the website (e.g., firstnamemiddlenamelastname.com).
• Including a picture purporting to be the registered representative.
• Providing information about the registered representative’s employment history, including prior employers’ CRD numbers and examination history.
• Asking individuals to fill out a contact form with the individuals’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, the subject of the inquiry and space for a message.
• Many of these sites contain poor grammar, misspellings, odd or awkward phrasings, or misuse of financial services terminology.

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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

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.