This month saw some of the world’s biggest broker-dealers fined a collective $555million by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The offense? “Widespread and long standing failures” surrounding their digital communications. Namely, their inability to keep highly sensitive information relating to their assets off external consumer tools such as WhatsApp.
Despite regulators already clamping down on the use of vulnerable, unauthorized messaging tools to discuss potentially market-moving matters just one year ago, it’s clear that the industry’s high alert hasn’t lasted long enough.
A selection of asset managers are putting the right platforms in place to remove personal communication tools once and for all, joining banks in their efforts to keep employees playing by the rules and keep regulators at bay. And rightly so; the combined $1billion in active or preparatory fines against global banks proves that bodies like the SEC aren’t playing around.
Why then, given the clear message, are so many still struggling to follow the rule book? Many will blame ongoing post-COVID remote working measures. More still blame a lack of tools capable of capturing messages and data as quickly and as easily as WhatsApp and similar apps. We say those excuses won’t cut it.
RMS to the rescue
Our highly configurable RMS was purpose-built to put an end to non-compliant consumer tools, offering a restriction-free way for asset managers and owners to securely capture and communicate every inch of data without ever leaving our platform (using a web browser or via our iOS app).
We’ve spent years fine-tuning our RMS to enable effortless communication, adding a wealth of features such as:
- In-app commenting: Use in-line comment functionality to highlight specific notes or areas within a note, add commentary and see which users have added their own comments. All of this makes it easier than ever to strike up conversations when they’re needed, safely and securely within our platform. All you need to do is highlight the section you want to discuss, click the comment icon and type your thoughts in the comment bar–and don’t forget to tag colleagues, using the @ symbol, to notify them of your thoughts and comments.
- Alerts & Notifications: To stay up to date at all times, users can leverage our Rules Engine to monitor and receive alerts on the use of certain keywords on note bodies. When doing so, our RMS will not only alert users of tracked words, it will provide a useful paper trail for ongoing compliance and governance. Perfect for electronic record-keeping standards, data management regulations of privacy, availability and security, communications monitoring and control, and more.
- Mail classifying: Here, users can route their emails and the relevant information within them straight into our RMS. After this, rerouted emails can be tagged and assigned against a series of configurable rules that simplify the storing and sorting of data that needs to be captured–a significant help to asset managers or owners struggling to keep abreast of the critical information flooding their inboxes every day.
- Slack and Teams integration: Bipsync RMS syncs with the messaging tools users know and love (the secure, built for enterprise tools, that is) to help them share notes among channels and colleagues for fast action. Users can comment directly on shared notes via Teams and Slack, and have those comments posted straight into Bipsync. New Slack rules extend that cohesion further, allowing for research notes to be automatically posted in selected Slack channels, saving users time whilst ensuring communications, and the sharing of files, notes and other relevant data remain protected.
- Remote working capabilities: Working from home is no excuse to ease off on security. With Bipsync RMS, users can communicate via comments in real time as they alert their colleagues of relevant content or questions during calls or virtual events–even if the note is locked by the original author. All research can be collated by topic, tag or other rule, and can be exported as a shareable PDF. Similarly, our Web Clipper extension for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge makes it easy to share important news and web pages with the click of a button.
At Bipsync, we make it our business to take the hassle out of the management of seemingly overwhelming data sources. We present that data in a way that improves efficiency and, crucially, removes the need for app switching, so users can communicate with the ease of civilian messaging services and the compliance of our tried and tested platform.
To learn more, please get in touch or request a demo today!
