¿Está cumpliendo con los requisitos de retención de registros de la SEC?

Your financial services organization has obligations to keep business records a certain way for a specific length of time. That’s because the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) require it. But knowing these regulations is only the first hurdle. The second is effectively implementing them. Does your document management service make this process easy?

¿Quién debe seguir las reglas de la SEC?

You’re likely well aware of whether FINRA or SEC rules apply to your business. But as a refresher, 17 CFR §240.17a-4 applies to:

• Miembros de una bolsa de valores nacional que realizan transacciones comerciales con valores directamente con otras personas que no sean miembros de una bolsa de valores nacional
• Corredores o distribuidores que realizan transacciones comerciales con valores a través de un miembro de una bolsa de valores nacional
• Corredores o distribuidores, incluido un distribuidor de derivados OTC
• Operadores de permuta basados en valores que también son intermediarios o concesionarios y
• Principales participantes de swap basados en valores que también son corredores o distribuidores

¿Qué registros debe conservar?

Los requisitos de retención de registros se aplican a los registros descritos en 17 CFR § 240.17 a- 3, que incluyen pero no se limitan a:

• Secantes
• Activos y pasivos, ingresos y otros libros mayores
• Registros de valores
• Memorándum de órdenes de intermediación
• Memorando de compra o venta de un valor
• Pone, llama, extiende, monta a ambos lados y otras opciones
• Money balances, confirmations, notices, and canceled checks
• Información del perfil de la cuenta del cliente
• Employment applications and records
• Email communications, website copy, and social media posts
• Marketing advertisements, audio, and visual materials

If you’re in doubt about whether to retain a particular document, consider whether the record relates to your core business functions or to any of the services you provide your clients or customers. If it does, keep it until you are certain. You risk facing compliance issues for failing to retain relevant records. There are no penalties for keeping superfluous ones, but that being said, you don’t want to keep everything forever. That strategy could lead to redundant, outdated, and trivial data and discovery challenges in the future, in addition to violating certain data privacy laws that apply to storing information beyond necessity.

Plazos para la retención de registros de la SEC

You’ll find how long you have to keep particular records in 17 CFR §240.17a-4. The rule is detailed, and you — or, more likely your compliance officer — should work through it carefully.

You have to keep records identified in §240.17a-3(a)(1) through (3), (5), (21), and (22) for at least six years. These include blotters, asset and liability ledgers, securities records or ledgers, a record of people who can explain the records the company keeps, and a record of each professional responsible for establishing regulatory compliance policies and procedures at the organization.

There’s a three-year requirement for other records, including but not limited to:

• Registros relacionados con § 240.17 a- 3 (a) (4), (6) a (11), (16), (18) a (20) y (25) a (31)
• Talonarios de cheques, extractos bancarios, cheques cancelados, conciliaciones de efectivo
• Facturas por cobrar y por pagar
• Comunicaciones de negocios
• Saldos de comprobación, cálculos de endeudamiento agregado y capital neto, estados financieros, conciliaciones de sucursales y documentos de trabajo de auditoría interna
• Garantías de cuentas y poderes
• Acuerdos comerciales escritos
• Documentos relacionados con valores; y
• Avisos relacionados con un sistema interno de agentes de bolsa

Todos los registros almacenados deben ser fácilmente accesibles durante los primeros dos años, ya sea que tenga que conservarlos durante al menos tres o seis años.

Según el artículo 240.17 a- 4 (c), también debe conservar las tarjetas de cuenta o los registros relacionados con los términos y condiciones de apertura o mantenimiento de una cuenta durante seis años después de cerrar la cuenta de un cliente.

Most SEC record retention requirements are three or six years. However, an organization can find itself in trouble maintaining certain records for three years instead of six if there’s a misunderstanding or human error in its information governance program.

Más requisitos de retención de registros

The SEC requires records to be kept immutable, which means no one can alter, delete, or shorten the life of the file.

Another requirement is to store duplicates of the original records in a separate location. That way, if something happens to one facility or piece of equipment, you have a reliable backup and haven’t lost anything.

Additionally, authorized users have to be able to find records quickly. This requirement means you must properly index all documents and provide users with a secure and efficient search function.

And finally, you have to assign someone as a designated third party (D3P) for independent access to your records. Your D3P is an entity that has secure access and the capabilities to retrieve the records for a regulatory audit or by court order without your cooperation.

NetDocuments facilita el cumplimiento de la SEC

Financial services organizations turn to NetDocuments, a leading cloud document and email management service provider because our solutions provide specific functions and features that can be used by companies to comply with FINRA and SEC record retention requirements, such as:

• Períodos de retención personalizables
• Repositorios Write Once, Read Many (WORM)
• Varias capas de cifrado
• Una función de búsqueda de documentos sólida con derechos de acceso personalizables
• Duplicación de datos en tres centros de datos altamente seguros y geográficamente separados y
• Capacidad D3P de NetDocuments

Are you considering a reliable partnership with a FINRA-focused DMS provider?

Check out our whitepaper to see how NetDocuments delivers a top preferred SaaS cloud solution for Financial Services organizations.

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