For the fourth straight year, examinations continue to increase in frequency, and the types of communications records being sought by examiners are more diverse than ever before.

These are just two of the many useful insights found in the 2018 Electronic Communications Compliance Survey Report, which highlights important compliance trends, industry shifts, and the best practices utilized by your peers. More importantly though, it shines a spotlight on the most prominent compliance gaps, giving your firm the chance to adjust course to avoid potential compliance blind spots — and ultimately, unnecessary risk.

As in prior years, the 2018 Compliance Survey Report reflects a changing industry, where older forms of electronic communications such as email are increasingly ceding ground to newer channels including social media, SMS/text messaging, and collaboration platforms. In fact, social media and SMS/text messaging lead the list of communications channels most requested for use by employees who wish to more efficiently reach out to clients and colleagues. Recognizing this need, firms are working to accommodate the desires of more youthful clients and staff, but progress has been slow. Meanwhile, survey data indicates that the frequency of examinations is on the rise, and that examiners are asking for more types of communications, putting additional pressure on firms to improve their recordkeeping efforts.

Other key findings of the 2018 Electronic Communications Compliance Survey Report include:

• After email, respondents see SMS/text messaging as the greatest source of compliance risk by a large margin.
• 24 percent of respondents worry they spend too little time supervising collaboration platforms, while 23 percent feel the same way about SMS/text messaging.
• While 87 percent of respondents have written supervision policies in place regarding the use of email, a mere 54 percent can say the same for increasingly common collaboration platforms such as Slack and Microsoft Teams.
• Nearly half of respondents have been examined within the last year, and just over a quarter had been examined within the prior six months.

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Electronic Compliance Survey
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