FINRA Customer Records and Communication Recordkeeping Violations

To prevent finra customer records and communication recordkeeping violations requirement issues, you must control where business communications occur, capture them into a supervised recordkeeping system, and prove you can retrieve complete, accurate records on demand. Operationally, that means approved channels, enforced retention, supervisory review, and defensible evidence that off-channel messaging is prevented or promptly remediated.

Key takeaways:

• Treat “recordkeeping” as a system problem: approved channels, capture, retention, search, and supervision must work together.
• Build controls around real behavior: mobile devices, texting, collaboration tools, and personal email are common failure points.
• Keep exam-ready evidence: WSPs, approvals, surveillance outputs, exception handling, and retrieval testing results.

“Recordkeeping violations” in the FINRA context usually show up as a gap between what your policies say and what your teams actually do. A firm can have a written rule that “all business communications must be retained,” but still fail because reps text clients, use personal email, or move conversations into collaboration tools that are not captured. Another common failure is technical: the archive exists, but retrieval is incomplete, retention settings are wrong, or supervision cannot demonstrate meaningful review.

Your objective is straightforward: ensure business-related customer communications and customer/account records are created, retained, and supervised in a way that is complete, searchable, and reproducible. The sources provided here focus on communications standards and supervision obligations that sit next to recordkeeping operations, especially for communications with the public and supervisory systems. Retail communication standards and principal oversight drive the need for controlled workflows and auditable approvals for customer-facing content (FINRA Rule 2210). Supervisory systems must be reasonably designed and evidenced, not assumed (FINRA Rule 3110).

This page translates that requirement into implementable steps: scope what must be captured, lock down channels, make retention and supervision testable, and retain the artifacts that prove control performance during a FINRA exam.

Plain-English interpretation (what the requirement means)

You must be able to show, without scrambling, that:

1. Customer communications are truthful and not misleading, and your firm has a process to review/approve them before use where required (FINRA Rule 2210).
2. Supervision is real and evidenced, meaning you can demonstrate who supervises communications, what they review, what exceptions look like, and how issues are escalated and corrected (FINRA Rule 3110).

Recordkeeping “violations” typically occur when communications exist but are not captured (off-channel), are captured but not searchable/retrievable in a complete way, or are captured but supervision cannot demonstrate review or governance tied to the communications program.

Who it applies to (entity and operational context)

Applies to:

• FINRA member broker-dealers producing or distributing communications with the public (FINRA Rule 2210) and operating supervisory systems over those communications (FINRA Rule 3110).

Operational contexts where violations happen:

• Registered reps and supervisors communicating with retail customers (email, text, chat, social media DMs).
• Marketing and product teams publishing retail communications, pitch decks, websites, and campaign content that requires pre-use approval workflows (FINRA Rule 2210).
• Client service and operations maintaining customer records that must be complete and retrievable in the firm’s books and records environment.
• Third parties that provide communication tooling, archiving, CRM, and surveillance; your obligations do not disappear because infrastructure is outsourced (FINRA Rule 3110).

Regulatory text

“No member may make any retail communication or correspondence that contains any untrue statement of a material fact, or is otherwise false or misleading. Communications must provide a sound basis for evaluating the facts and must not omit material facts or qualifications.” (FINRA Rule 2210)

Operator meaning: You need controlled creation, review, and distribution of customer-facing communications so you can demonstrate (a) the content met FINRA standards at the time it was used and (b) the firm can reproduce what was sent/posted and the approvals tied to it. Pair that with a supervisory system that assigns responsibility, runs review, documents findings, and remediates issues (FINRA Rule 3110).

What you actually need to do (step-by-step)

1) Define scope: what communications and records are “in”

Create a written scope statement that includes:

• Communication types: retail communications, correspondence, institutional communications (as applicable), plus operational communications that affect customer accounts and servicing (FINRA Rule 2210).
• Channels: firm email, approved texting, collaboration tools, social media, web content, call recordings if applicable, and any channel where a rep could discuss products, recommendations, performance, or account actions.
• Content classes: marketing materials, research summaries shared externally, pitch books, account servicing messages, disclosures, and complaint-related interactions.

Deliverable: “Communications & Customer Records Inventory” mapped to owners and systems.

2) Establish approved-channel rules and enforce them technically

Write and enforce a rule: business communications with customers must occur only on approved, captured channels. Back it with technical controls:

• Mobile device management where you allow business apps and block or restrict unapproved apps.
• Email controls to reduce forwarding to personal addresses and flag suspicious patterns.
• Approved texting/collaboration solutions integrated with archiving and supervision workflows.

Tie the rule to supervisory expectations and escalation paths (FINRA Rule 3110).

Deliverables: channel standard, exception process, enforcement configuration summary.

3) Build a principal review and approval workflow for retail communications

For retail communications that require review/approval, implement a workflow that:

• Identifies content that needs approval before use.
• Assigns an appropriately authorized principal as approver.
• Preserves the final approved version and the approval record.

This should be reflected in your written supervisory procedures (WSPs) and evidenced in tooling or ticketing (FINRA Rule 2210; FINRA Rule 3110).

Deliverables: approval matrix, WSP section on communications approvals, approval logs.

4) Configure retention, capture, indexing, and retrieval as a testable control

Recordkeeping programs fail most often at retrieval. Treat retrieval as a control with acceptance criteria:

• Capture: messages/posts are ingested reliably from all approved channels.
• Indexing: records are searchable by customer, rep, time period, and channel.
• Integrity: records are preserved in a way that supports supervision and production in exams.
• Retrieval testing: run periodic retrieval tests for representative samples and document results.

Supervisors should see the results of exceptions and failed captures as part of ongoing oversight (FINRA Rule 3110).

Deliverables: retention configuration evidence, retrieval test scripts and results, exception logs.

5) Implement surveillance and supervision routines that produce evidence

Supervision must be more than “we could review if we wanted to.” Build routines that generate artifacts:

• Periodic reviews of communications by risk-based sampling (e.g., new reps, high-volume communicators, certain product terms).
• Lexicon/keyword alerts tuned to your products and risk areas (performance claims, guarantees, promissory language, complaints).
• Documented escalation and remediation: coaching, content takedown, corrective disclosures, disciplinary actions where needed.

Map each routine to a supervisor role and document how the firm ensures it happens (FINRA Rule 3110). Keep the connection between content standards and review outcomes (FINRA Rule 2210).

Deliverables: surveillance procedures, review queues, alert disposition logs, remediation tickets.

6) Control third parties that touch communications and archiving

If a third party hosts your archive, texting platform, CRM, or marketing tools:

• Contractually require retention and retrieval support, including export capability for exam requests.
• Confirm administrative access, audit logs, and supervision features.
• Test eDiscovery-style exports and document response times and completeness.

This fits cleanly into your supervisory system obligations (FINRA Rule 3110).

Deliverables: third-party due diligence package, contract clauses, export test results.

7) Train to behavior and verify adoption

Training must be channel-specific and practical:

• What counts as business communication.
• Where to communicate.
• What happens if a customer texts a personal number.
• How to move the conversation back to an approved channel.

Then verify adoption with monitoring and exception reporting (FINRA Rule 3110).

Deliverables: training completion records, attestations, exception and follow-up logs.

Required evidence and artifacts to retain (exam-ready checklist)

Maintain a package that can be produced quickly:

• WSPs covering communications with the public, approvals, supervision, escalation, and exception handling (FINRA Rule 2210; FINRA Rule 3110).
• Communications inventory (channels, systems, owners, capture method).
• Approval records for retail communications: version history, principal approval, dates (FINRA Rule 2210).
• Supervisory review evidence: sampling plans, review logs, alert queues, dispositions, escalations (FINRA Rule 3110).
• Archive configuration evidence: retention settings, access controls, audit logs, indexing/search capability.
• Retrieval test results: what was requested, what was returned, gaps found, corrective actions.
• Off-channel exceptions: incidents, remediation steps, disciplinary records where applicable.
• Third-party artifacts: SOC reports if available, contract terms, due diligence, export testing records (FINRA Rule 3110).

Common exam/audit questions and hangups

Expect questions framed like:

• “Show me the last set of retail communications and the principal approvals.” (FINRA Rule 2210)
• “How do you supervise rep communications across email, text, and collaboration tools?” (FINRA Rule 3110)
• “Prove you can retrieve a complete set of communications for Customer X for a given period.”
• “What happens when a customer contacts a rep on an unapproved channel?”
• “Who owns the archive, and who can change retention settings? Show the change history.” (FINRA Rule 3110)

Hangups that trigger deeper reviews:

• Inconsistent inventories across IT, Compliance, and the business.
• Manual approval processes without reliable audit trails.
• Retrieval that depends on one person or one fragile process.
• Third-party archives where the firm cannot independently validate exports.

Frequent implementation mistakes (and how to avoid them)

1. Policies without technical enforcement. If personal texting is prohibited but not monitored, you will still have off-channel communication risk. Pair policy with device/app controls and exception reporting (FINRA Rule 3110).
2. Approvals that don’t preserve the exact final content. Store the exact version used, not a draft and not a “substantially similar” file (FINRA Rule 2210).
3. Archive exists, but nobody tests retrieval. Add documented retrieval tests and track corrective actions as a supervised control (FINRA Rule 3110).
4. Supervision that can’t show work. A supervisor saying “I review communications” without logs, queues, or evidence creates an exam problem (FINRA Rule 3110).
5. Third-party assumptions. If a provider says “we archive everything,” validate exports, search, and access controls yourself (FINRA Rule 3110).

Enforcement context and risk implications (practical, not speculative)

The operational risk is predictable: if communications are not captured and supervised, you can’t demonstrate compliance with content standards, you can’t reconstruct customer interactions during disputes, and you can’t respond confidently to exam requests (FINRA Rule 2210; FINRA Rule 3110). The compliance risk concentrates around off-channel communications, weak supervisory evidence, and inability to retrieve complete records.

Practical execution plan (30/60/90-day)

You asked for speed; here’s a plan you can run without guessing durations for technical workstreams.

First 30 days (stabilize and expose gaps)

• Publish an approved-channels standard and an interim escalation procedure for off-channel events (FINRA Rule 3110).
• Build a communications and systems inventory owned by Compliance with IT sign-off.
• Identify which retail communications require principal approval and document the approval workflow and approvers (FINRA Rule 2210).
• Run a retrieval tabletop: pick a customer and rep, request all communications in a period, document what you can and cannot produce.

Days 31–60 (implement controls and produce evidence)

• Turn inventory into control coverage: each channel must have capture, retention, search, and supervision owners.
• Stand up or tune surveillance review queues and create evidence-producing review routines (FINRA Rule 3110).
• Formalize WSP updates for communications review/approval and supervision responsibilities (FINRA Rule 2210; FINRA Rule 3110).
• Start exception reporting for off-channel attempts, with documented remediation steps.

Days 61–90 (prove it works and harden governance)

• Execute retrieval tests and close gaps with tracked corrective actions (FINRA Rule 3110).
• Audit principal approvals for a sample of retail communications and confirm the archive retains the final used version (FINRA Rule 2210).
• Perform a targeted review of high-risk populations (new reps, heavy communicators) and document outcomes (FINRA Rule 3110).
• If you use third parties for capture/archive, complete export testing and document operational readiness (FINRA Rule 3110).

Where Daydream fits (practitioner use-case): Daydream can act as the system of record for your control narrative, mapping WSP requirements to channel inventories, evidence requests, exception tickets, and retrieval testing results so you can answer exam questions with a single, consistent package.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we have to ban texting with customers to avoid recordkeeping issues?

No. You need a controlled approach where any business texting occurs on approved, captured channels with supervision and evidence (FINRA Rule 3110). If you allow texting, enforce the approved tool and treat personal SMS as an exception that requires remediation.

What’s the minimum evidence FINRA examiners expect for communications approvals?

Keep the final communication as used, the principal approval record, and the applicable WSP section that explains the workflow (FINRA Rule 2210). If your process is in a tool, preserve audit logs showing who approved and when.

How do we handle customers who initiate contact through a rep’s personal number or social media DM?

Train reps to move the conversation to an approved channel quickly and document the exception and remediation (FINRA Rule 3110). Also tighten technical controls where feasible to reduce repeat occurrences.

We archive email, but supervisors don’t review it regularly. Is that a problem?

It can be. You need a supervisory system with defined review routines and evidence of review and escalation, not just storage (FINRA Rule 3110). Align review to risk, but document the methodology and outputs.

Can a third-party archive provider “own” recordkeeping for us?

The provider can run the tooling, but you still need governance, supervision, and proof you can retrieve and produce records (FINRA Rule 3110). Validate exports and audit trails directly.

What’s the fastest way to find gaps before an exam?

Run a retrieval test for a real customer and rep across every approved channel, then compare results to your inventory and WSPs (FINRA Rule 3110). The delta becomes your remediation backlog.