Hearsay Systems Launches First SMS Compliance Automation Solution for Financial Advisors

Compliant Advisor Cloud Leader Introduces New FINRA, SEC, IIROC, MFDA, and FTC Rules Engine to Enable Advisors to Meet Client Expectations for Text Messaging without Creating Unmanageable Supervision Team Burden

Hearsay Systems, the trusted leader in compliant digital communications and workflow solutions for the financial services industry, announced its latest offering to simplify compliance for modern financial services organizations. The company debuted the first and only automated compliance supervision solution specifically for text messaging to proactively protect firms from financial service and telecommunication industry requirements. This innovative solution leverages industry-specific keyword lexicons powered by Hearsay’s next-generation compliance platform with AI-powered risk meter.

“We designed our intelligent, modular lexicons to provide a simple, turnkey solution that protects organizations and field representatives alike,” said Chris Fernandes, Head of Legal & Compliance for Hearsay Systems.

The powerful new offering provides a set of pre-built lexicon lists that align with firm, industry, and federally mandated advertising regulations. It uses intelligent classifiers to automatically detect any forbidden keywords in employee text messages. Any texts that include a match from lexicon lists are either blocked or an AI-driven risk alert is created for compliance review, preventing any agent or advisor from willingly or unwittingly engaging in unscrupulous practices via text. Besides specific regulatory matches, these pre-built lexicon lists also are designed to discourage specific behavior patterns that would run afoul of FCC and FTC privacy and consumer protection regulations, such as direct solicitation. Hearsay’s lexicons are continuously enhanced based on thousands of decisions made by compliance officers, enabling texting programs to scale without adding additional headcount.

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“Compliance is one of the biggest issues for financial services organizations, and as more and more business is conducted via text, it becomes increasingly complex,” said Chris Fernandes, Head of Legal & Compliance for Hearsay Systems. “We recognized this as a problem for our customers and designed our intelligent, modular lexicons to provide a simple, turnkey solution that protects organizations and field representatives alike. It has never been easier for advisors and agents to adhere to their respective firms’ texting policies or for firms to protect their brand reputation across all channels.”

The latest compliance supervision capabilities were designed so that any financial services organization can select which terms it would like to utilize from Hearsay’s curated Wealth Management, Property & Casualty, and Life Insurance industry lexicons in order to meet its own organizational risk profile. Organizations can also include any additional lexicon terms that they see fit or use Hearsay’s lexicons to supplement existing lists that are already set up.

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Hearsay’s industry-specific lexicons are built on Hearsay’s next-generation compliance platform, a comprehensive compliance solution that enables firms to easily monitor, supervise, and comply with company policies and industry regulations including FINRA, SEC, FFIEC, NAIC, IIROC, FCA, and MiFID II requirements. The new Advertising Lexicons allows firms to comply with guidance and regulations from MMA, FCC, and FTC. Hearsay’s compliance platform also applies predictive technology to reduce false alerts and help compliance teams focus on activities that pose the highest risk while increasing security coverage and control. In fact, Hearsay found that compliance officers collectively saved nearly 75,000 hours in 2019 by automating manual tasks.

Applying Hearsay lexicons to texts over its compliance platform, firms are able to not only block outgoing messages based on rules, but monitor activities through a universal supervision dashboard which includes alerts, internal team notes, and text message sampling. Administrators gain flexible policy controls and approval workflows as well. They also can view text message attribution so that they have a record of who said what, when, and to whom. The universal supervision dashboard provides advanced reporting capabilities, both pre-built and custom options, and flexible TCPA Opt-In, Opt-Out and Consent Notice flows. It can be set up based on hierarchy by either region or line of business to meet the needs of complex organization structures.

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