At RIA in a Box, we are continuously working on enhancing our products and services for registered investment adviser (“RIA”) firms to efficiently meet their regulatory requirements and achieve operational excellence. From working with over 4,000 RIA firms, we understand the evolving challenges that investment advisors face, particularly in areas related to compliance, cybersecurity, and daily business operations.
Below we discuss our most recently released innovations, integrations, and updates to our product offerings including the RIA in a Box MyRIACompliance® platform.
Here are the most noteworthy new MyRIACompliance® features and updates released during 2021:
1. Communications Archiving and Review Release: RIA Firms can now complete their archiving and review duties within the MyRIACompliance® platform. The Communications Archiving and Review solution enables registered investment adviser firms to store, retrieve, and filter communications all within a single platform. Our solution was built specifically for RIAs to optimize the content review process and to leverage a proactive approach to compliance concerns. This new solution automates the collection and storage of an RIA firm’s emails, social media, and website content.
RIA Communications Archiving and Review features include:
- Capture, store, and review email, webpages and social media communications
- Archive and review social media posts from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
- Capture webpages on a monthly basis
- Email review with auto-flagging of keywords (customizable)
- Easily retrieve archived data as needed
- Simplify supervisory review process
- MyRIACompliance users can seamlessly review and integrate archiving activities into their compliance calendar and compliance log
2. MyRIACompliance Platform Homepage Redesign®: We released the redesign of our MyRIACompliance® platform homepage in the first quarter of 2021. The new homepage is designed to be more intuitive for both supervisory users and employees. The redesign includes, but is not limited to, the following upgrades: 1) clear labels to better distinguish tasks required between the firm’s employees versus the CCO or supervisory user, 2) improved dashboard to view calendar items and urgent action items, 3) a resources section for relevant industry news. Our team will continue to listen to client feedback and develop and/or enhance features that will improve the user experience on MyRIACompliance®.
3. Employee Trade Monitoring Enhancements : With the ability to establish an electronic data feed to over 15,000 financial institutions, the employee trade monitoring feature automates the submission and tracking of personal securities holdings and transactions for RIA firms of all sizes. The enhancements made to this tool simplify the process for Chief Compliance Officers (“CCO”) to identify trading violations, including front running, as well as update private restricted lists, and save time with an automated trade pre-clearance function. Check out our blog post on the Employee Trade Monitoring enhancements to learn more details.
4. New SEC Marketing Rule Module: Due to the new SEC RIA Marketing Rule, RIA firms registered with the SEC which have implemented the new rule are now required to provide additional information related to their marketing practices on the Form ADV. In the MyRIACompliance® platform, supervisor users of SEC-registered RIA firms will be prompted to view our blog post and webinar on the marketing rule. We also provide a Policies and Procedures Manual tool and a link to the Form ADV Changes page. In addition to this page, SEC-registered RIA firms will also have a calendar item pertaining to the new rule.
5. DOL Rule Module: In response to the Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) PTE 2020-02 “Improving Investment Advice for Workers and Retirees”, we developed a DOL Rule module for our MyRIACompliance® users. Users are provided with educational resources and tools related to the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule through our DOL Rule Module under the regulatory tab. We offer a sample DOL Rule Checklist for firms to document their compliance with the Impartial Conduct Standards.
6. CRM integrations for Redtail and Wealthbox: Our integrations with industry-leading CRM providers allow firms to view, complete, and track tailored regulatory compliance tasks all within the CRM system. Specifically, the CRM users benefit from the auto-sync features which list the compliance tasks in their CRM calendar and automatically log their activities in their MyRIACompliance® log.
7. Vendor Due Diligence Risk Assessment Enhancement: Our Vendor Due Diligence solution addresses a top cybersecurity challenge for RIA firms by enabling firms to connect their vendors and automate the firm’s third party vendor review and documentation. The enhancement made during first quarter allows clients to seamlessly populate non-platform vendors within the vendor risk assessment table.