SunGard’s Protegent Adds linkedFA Surveillance as Part of Social Media Compliance Solution

LinkedFA, a leading social networking site for financial professionals and investors, is now among the social networks surveilled – along with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – by SunGard’s Protegent Social Media Surveillance solution in aggregate to help firms monitor and archive posted content by their advisors and clients. While linkedFA provides a niche social networking web site for advisors and their clients to communicate away from large open networks, Protegent Social Media Surveillance helps firms manage supervisory regulatory obligations and enforce internal social media policies by providing automated pre-approval workflows, reporting and alerting capabilities.

As social media sites become an increasingly popular communications tool among financial advisors and investors, organizations must understand how their representatives are using them in order to meet regulations. Firms also are interested in measuring their return on investment from using such mediums in terms of outreach to their clients. By adding linkedFA to the social media sites Protegent monitors, organizations are able to provide their representatives with access to linkedFA.com from the Protegent portal, as well as to all of linkedFA’s features including industry news content with sharing and forwarding rights.

Stephen Prosser, co-founder and chief operating officer of linkedFA, said, “Firms within the financial industry have found social media governance to be one of the most difficult compliance hurdles to overcome in recent years. Advisors are eager to be able to use social media to grow their businesses, but often they are not comfortable with communicating with clients and prospects in the large social networks that currently exist. Meanwhile, compliance departments are scrambling to keep up with rules and regulations surrounding social media communication. SunGard’s Protegent provides monitoring and pre-approval workflow for linkedFA users which helps remove these hurdles on both ends of the spectrum with efficiency and control.”

Steve Sabin, chief operating officer of SunGard’s Protegent business unit, said, “As firms look to reduce regulatory and reputational risks and support key business objectives, they are seeking better ways to help ensure advisors use social media communications appropriately in multiple venues to grow their businesses, while also making sure they adhere to regulations and policies. linkedFA expands Protegent’s universe of social media sites that can be accessed by advisors and investors, and helps enhance firms’ ability to improve control and transparency of their advisors’ networking activity across a growing number of social networks.”