Text messaging, or texting, may be spreading like wildfire, but many securities firms have long banned its use for business-related purposes--this despite the fact that regulators have only recently said that archiving of such messages is required. With new regulatory mandates and a continued push from some broker-dealers, vendors who had previously focused on other areas of electronic communications are turning their attention to texting on handheld devices.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's (Finra) December guidance on the review and supervision of e-communications explicitly included, for the first time, text messages--as well as e-mail and IMs--sent over handhelds (Securities Industry News, Jan. 7). The National Association of Independent Broker-Dealers had argued in a July letter, when the proposed guidance was out for comment, that texting was "merely a convenient substitute for voice communication" that "should not be classified within the definition of electronic correspondence." Finra, however, held that such messages must be archived and reviewed.
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