More than 80% of Americans text regularly, yet it’s estimated that less than 10% of advisory firms currently use texting to communicate with their clients.
To enable advisors to text with their clients safely and securely, Redtail Technology launched Redtail Speak, a compliance-approved communication platform that enables advisors to text with clients, directly in the Redtail CRM.
“There’s really no opportunities for advisors to be able to communicate to their clients via texting. There were no solutions available that were secure and compliant,” Redtail Technology CEO Brian McLaughlin told ThinkAdvisor in a phone interview. “That’s basically what we’re doing with Speak: providing a platform for real-time communication with advisors and clients.”
Advisors are able to send a message through Speak to a client’s mobile number, and when the client replies via text, the message appears on Speak. Speak also has customizable preferences for notifications, messages, invitations, out-of-office replies and the area code of the phone number that clients will be texting.
Speak is compliant with all federal rules and regulations, including the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s new regulatory notice, which states that all text messaging conversations must be recorded.
Every conversation, message and document is searchable and automatically archived, recorded daily and shared with the advisor’s email surveillance provider, offering advisors a safe, compliance-approved way to communicate with their clients.
Another important component of the compliance features is client consent, McLaughlin told ThinkAdvisor.