SMARSH ANNOUNCES VENDOR RISK MANAGEMENT AND CYBER COMPLIANCE JOIN RISK AND COMPLIANCE PORTFOLIO FOR WEALTH MANAGEMENT

Comprehensive Additions to Market-Leading Digital Communications Compliance Platform Strengthens Firms’ Risk Posture as Regulatory Focus on Technology Heightens

Unified Portfolio Enables RIAs and Broker-Dealers to ‘Experience Compliance Made Easy’ with Ability to Archive Data, Eliminate Blind Spots, Streamline Workflows and Automate Vendor and Cyber Processes

WASHINGTON, D.C. – May 16, 2023 – Smarsh®, the global leader in digital communications compliance and intelligence, today announced at the FINRA Annual Conference that its Privva and Entreda subsidiaries have joined its unified risk and compliance portfolio. The move provides RIAs and broker-dealers with one solution that brings together Vendor Risk Management (formerly Privva) and Cyber Compliance (formerly Entreda) offerings with the Professional Archive platform.

“Financial industry regulators have made it clear that wealth management firms must make the best use of technology to improve their compliance capabilities and to strengthen their defenses against risk,” said Sheldon Cummings, General Manager, Smarsh Corporate. “The increased regulatory scrutiny on vendor due diligence and cybersecurity further drives the need for RIAs and broker-dealers to become more effective at demonstrating proper oversight of digital data. Smarsh has responded by expanding our offerings and consolidating a single portfolio offering for communications and cyber compliance, making it easier and more cost-efficient for firms to meet this fast-growing challenge.”

In 2020, Smarsh acquired cybersecurity provider Entreda, which in turn acquired the vendor risk management platform Privva a year later.

The enhanced Smarsh portfolio is an easy-to-use and efficient cloud-based suite that archives and captures virtually all data across a firm’s channels, surfaces risk hidden in communications and enables firms to meet regulatory obligations confidently – all while automating vendor risk management and cybersecurity compliance. Smarsh serves as a single trusted partner, leaning on its deep industry experience, extensive expertise and broad set of technology solutions.

Vendor Risk Management: Regulators have instructed firms to maintain internal processes and procedures that comply with vendor record-keeping requirements. By automating and simplifying the most resource-intensive parts of third-party risk evaluation and management, Smarsh VRM allows organizations to meet their regulatory compliance obligations and mitigate internal risk more easily.

• Review vendors, manage remediations and create reports
• Maintain auditable tracking of remediation plans and validation documentation
• Standardize the approach by connecting teams with cross-functioning reports
• Customize risk assessments, vendor organization, and scoring rules to meet policies
• Track progress, manage communications, and get regular remediation process updates
• Review vendors’ OFAC Sanction status directly within the platform

Cyber Compliance: FINRA and the SEC are sharpening their focus on firms with cybersecurity gaps, requiring more reporting and record-keeping by compliance teams. Cyber Compliance helps firms improve their cybersecurity risk posture and easily monitor the security and compliance of devices, networks, and users with a single-pane-of-glass solution designed to address the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework.

• Establish policies, conduct virtual audits, and push remediation services to devices
• Minimize cybersecurity risks that could lead to significant business disruptions and harm
• Reduce human error with an inclusive suite of built-in remediation applications
• Use the cybersecurity risk score to understand how the firm compares to industry peers
• Generate valuable insights from data with granular analytics features
• Benefit from intuitive device management to enhance the end-user experience

Professional Archive: This comprehensive and user-friendly compliance platform empowers firms to capture data across any of their digital communication channels and leverage archive, supervision, e-discovery, and data export capabilities in one place. As a result, firms can save time and money while implementing innovative communication and collaboration technologies and stay ahead of regulatory change.

• SEC and FINRA compliance made easy with a single archive, supervision and data export platform
• Eliminate blind spots with proactive, modern reporting dashboards
• Save time with fast searches, purpose-built supervision tools and free self-service exports
• Capture data from more than 100 digital communications channels
• With its intuitive platform and user interface, users can get up and running quickly

Additional Services
Smarsh also provides a range of services to help firms solve for market conditions and unique business challenges. Services for RIAs and broker-dealers include staff augmentation for compliance review, prewritten policy libraries to get up and running quickly, technical resources to help fulfil audit or examination requests, email hosting, and archiving of website content.

New firms that archive at least two communications channels with Smarsh will receive one year of complimentary Vendor Risk Management services (up to three vendors). In addition, Vendor Risk Management and Cyber Compliance are available for firms to purchase separately and directly through the AWS Marketplace.

“We recognize that increased regulatory scrutiny amid intensifying market turbulence means that many wealth management firms are struggling to do more with the same or fewer resources,” Cummings said. “Without help, these forces can make it harder for firms to stay on top of their myriad of digital communications, vendor risk management, and cybersecurity obligations. Smarsh is committed to answering that call for help, and this integrated risk and compliance portfolio is a significant stride in our mission to make compliance easy for our wealth management customers.”

 

About Smarsh
Smarsh enables companies to transform oversight into foresight by surfacing business-critical signals in more than 100 digital communications channels. Regulated organizations of all sizes rely upon the Smarsh portfolio of cloud-native digital communications capture, retention, and oversight solutions to help them identify regulatory and reputational risks within their communications data before those risks become fines or headlines.

Smarsh serves a global client base spanning the top banks in North America, Europe, and Asia, along with leading brokerage firms, insurers, and registered investment advisors and U.S. state and local government agencies. To discover more about the future of communications capture, archiving and oversight, visit www.smarsh.com.