The FCA’s COBS 4.11 states that most financial firms must keep records for at least three years, while regulators in general are insisting more and more heavily on good recordkeeping, especially when it comes to financial promotions.

A large proportion of firms still rely on manual processes which are ill-equipped to meet the challenges and complexities of the current regime, so many of them still need to take on new software. The overwhelming demand for comprehensive archiving, data collection and integration, as well as the need for complex monitoring and analytic software makes it almost impossible for marketing and compliance officers to do this manually and without support, which is time-consuming and expensive.

However, the need to take the necessary steps is all the more pressing because regulators are scrutinising financial promotions, particularly on social media, more and more. Indeed, a recent backlash against peer-to-peer lenders and proptech (property technology) platforms, coupled with The London Capital & Finance (LCF) scandal last year, put the credibility of financial promotions at the top of the FCA’s agenda. As a result, the regulator is now placing applying pressure to financial firms in its crusade to ensure that every promotion is fair, clear and not misleading. It is essential for financial institutions to be able to prove this by keeping good records.

Technology to the fore

With the regulator beginning to take action against non-compliance, firms should be taking the time left to them to review the way they do things and evolve processes that will allow them to meet their obligations efficiently and effectively.

Information technology is an important solution to the problems we have mentioned because it allows for end-to-end website and social media archiving - a process in which all digital assets are collected to display a website exactly as it appeared at a specified time and on a specified date. Once the software collects a record of this, it holds it in a web archive, indexes archives and makes them fully searchable, allowing firms to find content on demand.