Jacquie B
Associate Vice President, Public Relations & Communications Manager, Davidson Companies
Seeking examples from the brokerage industry of social media guidelines for employees. Anyone willing to share?
Answers (6)
Tim P
Financial Services Regulatory Compliance Consultant
Best Answers in: Auditing (1), Equity Markets (1)
Jacquie,
This is a very complex question especially with FINRA's proposed rumor rule, http://www.finra.org/Industry/Regulation/Notices/2009/P118808 . Additionally, firm's must take into consideration how they are going to preserve these records, review these records, and how they are going to evidence their review. Another thing they will need to create is a set of supervisory control procedures, which essentially spell out how the firm is going totest their procedures. Other things to consider are who the audience will be and what the content will cover.
Like I said very complex, and this is not an all inclusive list. I am currently writing such procedures for a FINRA member firm. Oh before I forget, my regulatory crystal ball tells me that us compliance people are in for some big changes especially with Obama's new Consumer Protection Agency. So I guess we all just better hold on. I hope that helps.
Rebecca D
Operations Analyst - Merrill Lynch Wealth Management
Best Answers in: Freelancing and Contracting (1), Compensation and Benefits (1), Staffing and Recruiting (1)
I work in the investments industry and I can tell you it's pretty stringent. My company requires that any licensed employees disclose any and all personal blogs or other electronic communications. Additionally, we must provide them with our usernames for all social media channels in which we are involved such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc. so that they can monitor the content to ensure it is not a conflict of interest. I'm not completely sure if it's the same industry-wide or if it's my employer's rules in particular.
Seems pretty invasive. Do you find yourself censoring your own life so your employer doesn't see??? There is no privacy after work???
Having worked at the largest Investment Banks and witnessed the emergence of email, IM and now social networking, I can say the following:-
Electronic Communications as defined by the regulators must be controlled, sampled and supervised. For all of the big firms I work with, this basically meant that personal Electronic Communications was too impractical to manage and therefore a risk, so it is banned at work.
No employee in the firms I know can access personal webmail, IM, linked IN, facebook etc in the office - its simply banned because of the regulatory and compliance risk.
I am not aware that an outright ban or supervision extends to an emloyees use from home, however I can see how some companies would be concerned about potential misuse of such accounts and would be issuing strict rules prohibiting business content.
Because it is a minefield, Compliance would rather this technology go away than have to deal with it.
Of course these comments relate to large brokerages. I have visited many hedge funds and see no such restrictions, but that could change with the impending new regulations.
From our perspective, few brokerage and asset management companies have sufficiently focused on social media to have enabling guidelines in place. Instead, as Ciaran Harry said earlier, all activity is banned outright.
However, we are aware of a few companies that are serious about addressing what can be done and within what guardrails.
A minority of financial advisors are experiencing the benefits of engaging in social media whether via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and are understandably anxious to get clarity.
We're tracking the activity. Our blog post from last week, in particular, aggregates the recent commentary. It's at http://bit.ly/BZ46x
Great question, we'll be interested in seeing what you learn.
Links:
Doug C
Chief Compliance Officer at Beacon Capital Partners
Best Answers in: Property Law (2), Commercial Real Estate (1), Criminal Law (1), Corporate Law (1), Finance and Securities Law (1), Lead Generation (1), Personal Real Estate (1)
I have to go with Rebecca's answer. I think Bank of America has it right. Blocking access to sites is not an effective policy. You can say the wrong things using social media from a mobile device or home and get yourself (and your company) in trouble.
Is it intrusive? If you identify yourself as broker or that you work for a broker, what you say is regulated. It doesn't matter whether you say it in Facebook or in email or some setting that you consider personal.
Brokers need guidance on what they can and cannot do. Compliance people need that clarity as well. Unfortunately, the FINRA rules are unclear on the use of social media.
