ExperienceCase Study
The value of AdvisorMail is immeasurable
Investment Planners, Inc. is an Illinois-based independent broker-dealer with 90 registered representatives located in 52 offices. As a member of the FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), the organization is required to monitor and store the thousands of internal, external and inter-office email messages and email attachments that its employees and registered representatives send and receive every day.
Challenge
Chief Compliance Officer Mark Hovis was charged with finding a message compliance and archiving system that would quickly satisfy his organization's stringent regulatory requirements, work across several field offices and cause no disruption to the daily workflow of his 90 registered representatives and home office staff.
Solution
After conducting research on three different solutions, Hovis selected LiveOffice's AdvisorMail. "In analyzing the value-to-cost ratio, AdvisorMail came out on top and offered us the best solution for our organization at the most cost effective price," according to Hovis. "Plus, we cannot afford to lose access to email at any time so AdvisorMail's transparent and rapid implementation process was highly attractive."
For now, Hovis estimates that he accesses AdvisorMail's web-based interface at least once a week to review messages that have been trapped by the system for further review and approval. He likes having the ability and flexibility to securely logon to AdvisorMail from any Internet-connected PC to quickly review any suspicious messages that the system has flagged.
"Having LiveOffice's AdvisorMail system in place is a regulatory necessity today," says Hovis. "I sleep better at night knowing that I can conduct simple and advanced searches on our email data at any time and easily monitor what our home office staff and field representatives are doing in regards to email communications."
During a recent regulatory audit, Hovis was required to produce email messages for himself and three others over a period of three months. He was able to instantly logon to AdvisorMail, conduct the search, download the search results from his PC to a DVD and immediately hand them over to the auditor.
"Being able to quickly search and download 10,000 messages to a DVD for the auditor meant huge time savings for us and demonstrated to this particular regulatory body that we are well-organized and place a high level of importance on our message compliance process. In this capacity, the value of AdvisorMail is immeasurable."
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