AdvisorVault Simplifies Electronic Records Supervision for FINRA firms

NEW YORK - Feb. 9, 2014 - PRLog -- In addition to properly archiving data offsite, AdvisorVault also helps FINRA firms with the ongoing supervision of electronic records. This is critical because once firms ensure data is correctly archived with a third party, compliance officers need to regularly test that they can access these records, something that should be done quarterly.

“After we put the AdvisorVault remote archiving solution in place at the customers premises, we provided our customers with a web interface so they can perform their data supervision process” Said Allan Lonz President of AdvisorVault, http://www.advisorvault.org. “What we provide is exactly what they need for this aspect of SEC rule 17a-4 and with our web based tool they can easily do their own searches of their complete data archive and pull up records to download them to their hard drive.” Added Allan.

A proper data supervisory tool needs to meet the specific compliance demands of SEC rule 17a-4 and therefore should have these three key features built into it:

Key Features of a Compliant Supervisory Tool:

1. Indexing of Data:   A compliant supervisory tool automatically indexes data. Indexing means data can be retrieved properly so searches are faster and all info is included in the archive

2. Secure Access:  Ideally, the archive will be accessed from a secure web interface. This allows compliance officers and other key staff to easily share the supervisory responsibilities

3. Downloading Data:  Compliance officers need to make copies of electronic records for auditors. And a proper supervisory tool will centralize the downloading of all data such as emails, word documents, scanned records and key client databases.

Summary
The ongoing supervision of electronic records is an ongoing challenge for small FINRA firms such as broker-dealers and registered investment advisors. The key is to outsource this to a third party that has  the above key features already built into their solution to simplify the whole process. Otherwise they risk increasing the complexity data supervision and of ultimately achieving rule 17a-4 and risk audit failure.

About AdvisorVault
AdvisorVault is a FINRA compliant vendor that has created the only complete compliance solution designed for small financial firms. Priced at one low monthly fee, the product specifically helps FINRA members simplify and reduce the cost of achieving all today’s electronic records protection and archiving rules. This includes rules SEC 17a-3 and 17a-4, the D3P requirements as well as the Business Continuity Planning demands.

AdvisorVault Contact:
Allan Lonz, President
AdvisorVault Inc.
alonz@advisorvault.org
www.advisorvault.org
Direct: 416-985-0310
Toll free: 1-866-732-1407