More On Legal & Compliance
from The Advisor's Professional Library- Proxy Voting RIAs are not required to vote proxies on behalf of their clients. However, when an RIA does assume responsibility for voting proxies, the firm’s policies and procedures should help to ensure that votes are cast in the best interest of clients.
- Risk-Based Oversight of Investment Advisors Even if the SEC had a larger budget and more resources, it is doubtful that the Commission would have the resources to regularly examine all RIAs. Therefore, the SEC is likely to continue relying on risk-based oversight to fulfill its mission of protecting investors.
Most advisors use Windows-based machines in their offices to do everything from customer relationship management to financial planning, but two recent announcements by partners to advisors show that Apple is gaining a presence among advisors beyond placing AAPL into client portfolios.
MFS Investment Management said it has launched a iPad application for use by its U.S. wholesalers while its website, mfs.com, has been optimized to work with iPads and iPhones.
Like other mutual fund wholesalers, MFS’ wholesalers can now share documents and build presentations on iPads with advisors away from their desktop machines, and link to third-party analytics to perform due diligence on MFS mutual funds.
Laserfiche, the international document management software firm, now offers its Laserfiche Mobile users the ability to use an iPhone’s onboard camera (or an iPad’s, for that matter, though fewer iPad owners use its camera) to take photographs of documents. Those photographed documents are converted into images that are securely placed into the advisor or broker-dealer’s document repository in the same way that an iPhone user would email a photo.
Once in the repository, an advisor can use Laserfiche Mobile for iPad to view that photographed document immediately, or have other authorized LaserFiche users view that document. Then, using Laserfiche Mobile’s Document Viewer, the advisor or compliance officer can email, print or rename the document, all while using an interface familiar to iPhone users.
The process, as demonstrated by Laserfiche engineer Brett Hickinbotham in an interview Monday in New York, shows how simple and intuitive Laserfiche has made the process of uploading and managing documents using an iPhone and iPad.
