Compliance lead explains his firm’s approach to compliant communication on fast-paced channels
At iA Private Wealth (iAPW) there was an acknowledgement that the needs of the business and the needs of financial advisors had begun to shift. The firm has been vocal about the rise of financial influencers and the role of social media in the modern Canadian investing landscape, and firm leaders have raised concerns about the risks that some investors may get exposed to through social media. Just as they advise wariness against unqualified online advice, iA Private Wealth has also seen a need to get their advisors onto social media channels themselves.
At an enterprise level, going where people are watching is an easy strategy for advisor marketing. It comes with the added benefit of putting qualified financial advice on social media channels, offering contrast and competition to some of the more unqualified approaches that can be found on those same channels. Compliance, however, is key to the execution of that strategy and the authority of advisors’ content. To roll out their social media strategy, iA Private Wealth needed a compliance process that served their platforms.
“It’s an opportunity for the advisors. When you go on social media like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, if an advisor makes a very interesting post,or if they have something that they would like to share with clients, we need to be ahead of the game,” says Alexey Burakovski, Director of Business Conduct & T1 Supervision and interim Chief Compliance Officer at iA Private Wealth. “It’s important to understand the needs of clients and advisors and identify compliant ways for them to engage on social media.”
An evolving approach to social media
All of these communications need to be executed in the context of regulatory obligations. Appropriate disclaimers need to be included, but the content itself needs to be assessed on a case- by-case basis to ensure compliance. The task is significant, Burakovski says that his team oversees in excess of 500 different practices. They need to make their judgements quickly, weaving together hard regulatory rules with an understanding of the advisor’s unique circumstances, expertise, and context.
Compliance, Burakovski says, has to be positioned as the gatekeeper in this scenario so that advisors don’t accidentally find themselves offside. However, that gatekeeping can’t be allowed to slow the pace of communication to the point where it becomes irrelevant. Policies need to be built to evolve.
Perhaps the best example of that evolution is the rise of short-form video platforms like YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok. Burakovski notes that iAPW advisors are not allowed to use TikTok yet, but they can leverage long-form content posted on channels like YouTube to then create short-form video content. Clips from a longer video, which contains all the appropriate disclaimers, can be posted on platforms like YouTube shorts provided they link back to the main video and include clarifying language in the post text.
Burakovski and his team also tailor their approach to individual advisors. As advisors stake out niche areas of content they are sharing expertise on, he and his team can work with them to help develop compliant forms of communication and guardrails for that area. The advisor can then use those guardrails to craft their content, which should ensure faster compliance approval.
Moving fast and staying compliant
All those tactics allow Burakovski and his team to turn around content approvals within 24 to 48 hours. One key feature of that speed is their investment in a third-party compliance platform called Red Oak. Red Oak allows for some degree of automation and pre-approval of certain communications. That includes certain podcast appearances and market updates. All of those posts will be rolled out quickly, and still receive a compliance check after posting.
It also provides a submission and approval platform that each stakeholder can use easily, rather than going through the back and forth of multiple email threads and document attachments. The automation provided by Red Oak affords Burakovski and his team more time and capacity to deal with complex requests and issues, including the consideration of adding access to new social media platforms to their advisors. Burakovski hopes that the speed his firm has been able to showcase can serve as an example to the whole industry and offer a message to CIRO about the importance of enabling advisor presence on social media.
“We can actually have a common ground with other dealers and hopefully with this common ground we can present ideas to CIRO which could help us,” Burakovski says. “We can speak with one voice and bring forward some of the enhancements to be done around review and approval of some of those sales communications.”
