I read a
short article in InvestmentNews today about a new social web site, LinkedFA, which is promoting itself as the
"first and only Finra-compliant social networking site for financial
professionals." I immediately thought to myself, how can a social networking
site tout itself as Finra-compliant when Finra hasn't released its compliance
guidelines yet? Finra postponed its introductory webinar until March.
Then I
asked myself the larger question; why would financial professionals want a 'walled-garden'
social media site in the first place? Doesn't that kind of defeat the
objective? If you're a financial advisor, don't you want to be where your
prospects are? A site dedicated to financial professionals is fine for
connecting with people within your industry but it doesn't help you reach new
customers.
Consider
that there are currently more than 250 million Facebook users, 30 million
Twitter users, and 25 million executives on LinkedIn. That's where the
conversations are taking place. That's where you can reach customers and
prospects.
Isn't it
better to participate in this larger, open conversation taking place on the Web
and develop best practices, with the help of technology, to make sure that
those conversations are appropriately logged and accounted for? That's the best
way to assure compliance, whether it's for Finra, the SEC, or some other
regulatory agency.
Our
financial services customers rely on FaceTime's IMAuditor and Unified Security
Gateway to not only secure their networks, but to manage and log content for
regulatory compliance.
That way they get the best of all worlds:
1) centralized
control of online conversations stored on their own servers so they can be
audited for compliance;
2) the ability to support any public social media site
in a secure manner and
3) the ability to
allow their traders and other employees to use the application that is best
suited to the job, whether that's Yahoo, Reuters, YellowJacket, Facebook or
Twitter - we don't mind, because, well,
we support them all.
My team
have put together a 30 minute briefing on "What you can stand to gain and lose
with Social Media" - why not join them on January 27th at either 10 eastern or 10 pacific?
Kailash:
Thank you for your interest in our site, linkedFA.com. I understand that this blog is intended to highlight the value of your products, but with your permission, I would like to respond to the points you have raised in your post regarding our offering.
linkedFA was designed to address FINRA?s existing compliance guidelines, specifically the requirement to save all client correspondence for no less than six years. linkedFA does this and allows the financial advisor to run a compliance report that captures all correspondence that occurs on the site between the advisor and his clients. That is not possible with main consumer social media sites.
If the FINRA guidelines change, we will respond by enhancing our offering. And our users will get the benefits of those enhancements without the need for software upgrades or costs.
Why use linkedFA instead of Facebook? Because of the well known privacy, security and reputation risks associated with using Facebook for business. Just this weekend, Jeff Zukerman, the founder of Facebook stated that the rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy. Really? Most investors that I know don?t want to share their investing decisions and results with their friends, relatives and acquaintances as well those of their advisor. Advisors don?t want their clients seeing the more inappropriate postings and pictures that sometimes show up on one?s Facebook wall. Your personal life is your business, but it?s not good for business. Nor do you want your competitors (who may also be your friends on Facebook) seeing, communicating with and poaching your clients.
Why use linkedFA instead of an enterprise solution? Because most advisors I know don?t work just in the office. They work at home, after hours and on the road. LinkedFA gives them the ability to leverage all the best features of social media, wherever they are, while managing their professional reputation and protecting their client?s privacy. There are many other unique features designed specifically with the financial advisor in mind. Please check us out at www.linkedFA.com.