Interactive Advisory Software Partners with Smarsh to Assist Financial Advisors with Social Media Communication Compliance

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Interactive Advisory Software (IAS), a provider of a consolidated wealth management software application for independent financial advisors and registered investment advisors (RIAs), has partnered with Smarsh, the managed service leader in innovative, secure and reliable email archiving and compliance solutions, to help advisors manage the retention and supervision of social media-related communications.

“With the explosion of social media use for businesses, RIAs and independent advisors have been faced with a new complexity to client communication”

The IAS Social Media Solution provides the necessary governance, security, compliance and policy controls for regulated organizations, enabling the capture, preservation, search, supervision and production of communication from applications such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, regardless of the device used to make the posts. The solution uses a combination of multiple technological message capture approaches, including proxy and application programming interface (API).

The increasing popularity of social networking websites introduces potential risk factors for organizations seeking to monitor content that may breach compliance, internal communication and privacy policies. The social media archiving solution provides features designed to help companies navigate electronic recordkeeping and supervision obligations, such as SEC 17a4 and FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06. Firms have the ability to define what social media capabilities can be used by staff; review, approve or reject messages before they are posted; capture and preserve messages in their original firm in a secure archive; and access postings that are indexed and searchable by message criteria, including date and content keywords.

For compliance reporting purposes, postings can be produced on-demand, assigned to multiple reviewers, or tagged as "complaint" or "advertising.” Firms can easily illustrate policy enforcement with the automatic logging of all administrator activity. The system also provides comprehensive data reports, such as social media usage.

“With the explosion of social media use for businesses, RIAs and independent advisors have been faced with a new complexity to client communication,” said John Philpott, CEO of IAS. “IAS’ partnership with Smarsh provides firms with the ability to adopt social media while assuring compliance with the SEC and FINRA. Tracking social media does not add extra work for staff because the archiving is automated behind the scenes. The Smarsh solution gives our clients the ability to quickly adjust to regulatory requirements that will continue to emerge as social media expands.”

IAS will host a webinar on social media compliance on Aug. 3, 2011. For more information, visit www.IASsoftware.com, or click here to register.

About Interactive Advisory Software

Interactive Advisory Software is the developer and distributor of Solution 360˚, a wealth management software application focused on serving the needs of Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) and Independent Financial Advisors. The company provides an integrated wealth management software application that allows advisors to deliver a holistic level of service to their clients from a single database. The single application combines Portfolio Management, Financial Planning, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Client Access Portals, Rebalancing and Back Office Services/Reconciliation. For more information, visit www.IASsoftware.com.