Instagram: For Financial Services Firms, A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

In a recent article published by Money Inc., Mike Pagani, Senior Director of Product Marketing and Chief Evangelist at Smarsh, argues that the explosive growth of popular photo-sharing social media platform Instagram offers Financial Services firms an opportunity unlike any other.

Instagram, Pagani points out, has more active monthly users than any social network outside of Facebook — and a full 50 percent of its users are active each day. Even better, those daily users are significantly more engaged by Instagram content, with images receiving 23 percent more engagement than similar Facebook content. The result is a platform that both marketers and customer retention experts salivate over — and Financial Services firms aren’t far behind. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America are just a few of the large financial institutions that have launched Instagram presences in the recent past.

“Instagram gives us an opportunity to connect with the general public by sharing insights into topics on the minds of our clients, as well as providing an intimate look into life at Goldman Sachs, and we think people will find there’s a lot more to our firm than simply being a financial services company,” states Goldman Sachs Global Co-Head of Brand & Content Strategy Amanda Rubin.

Having established why Instagram has grown so valuable for financial services firms, Pagani highlights an oft-overlooked aspect of utilizing the platform: Compliance. “Just like the more traditional forms of electronic communications in the financial services industry, such as email and IM, social media channels like Instagram must be properly retained and governed to satisfy very clear and serious regulatory requirements,” he writes. “It’s far too easy to put the cart before the horse and expose your firm to potential violations and other risks. In fact, firms are slow to catch up when it comes to implementing proper systems to address the mandatory compliance obligations of social media and other emerging channels.”

Finally, Pagani succinctly explains what you should be looking for in a supervision solution that can meet the unique compliance needs of your firm, “make sure that whatever archiving/supervision solution you put in place features a high degree of automation, specialized supervision and eDiscovery workflows and that it does not materially alter non-email archived content by converting it to an email format as that could break the chain of custody and also destroys valuable context for searching and other related compliance and legal functions.”

For more insights from Mike Pagani and to read the full article, visit Money Inc.

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