Financial services institutions handle and generate critical and sensitive documentation on a day-to-day basis. These documents widely range in impact and scale but can include anything from tax and loan records to credit card and investment account information (e.g., personally identifiable information or PII), financial statements and transaction records, loan disbursement letters, property titles or liens, service-level agreements and vendor-client contracts, and even employee and contractor payment histories.

Cloud technology has moved into our financial systems. This advancement, along with the increasing digitization of our currency, has resulted in increased scrutiny over how money and resources move through systems. State, federal, and global regulations aim to provide greater protection and stability for consumers and citizens, as well as larger economic systems like private corporations, non-profit organizations, and government bodies.

Regulations Affect the Operations of Financial Services Institutions

Regulators are responsible for reviewing evolving threats and best practices and publishing recommendations and requirements that proscribe how personal data should be managed, secured, and discarded.

Regulators specify how certain types of data, referred to as “records”, must be handled by financial services institutions throughout the life cycle of a file. Certain records must be retained indefinitely through cold storage or archival, whereas others are cleared for deletion or destruction after a certain time period has elapsed.

Regulations touch on different types of documents and records, which makes managing an entire data repository with customer information additionally challenging. This is where a Records Retention Schedule can provide crucial support.

The Power of an Automated Schedule

We previously defined records retention or management software as “computer programs designed to systematically control records within an organization.” These programs involve key operations related to data storage and sharing. The ideal solution will focus on security and control, two prongs that need to work in tandem for the automated records retention schedule to be fully realized.

Retaining control over your data is the cornerstone of records retention and data governance. Key components include content indexing and federated search functionalities, auditing and SIEM integration, metadata tagging and content classification engine, data leak protection, and hierarchical retention policies. Building a comprehensive and automated retention schedule involves several steps that, once established, can streamline your retention processes.

1. Define Policy Scope –

Policies should list the targeted requirements and identify affected parties (employees and third-party groups).

2. Classify Data –

Any data entering the system should undergo classification. Manual classification is time-consuming and costly. An automated records retention schedule will ideally include a content classification engine that scans uploaded content and applies appropriate metadata tags.

3. Specify Retention and Protection Measures –

Retention Policies should be defined according to how they will protect data, the procedures they will carry out in relation to data once applied, and what events will occur once the policy expires.

4. Monitor and Report –

Any automated system requires monitoring and reporting measures to ensure that the system is running as expected. With audit logs and SIEM integration, you can capture folder and file activities down to the user or system operation, time, point of access, action, and outcome. Exportable audit logs ensure easy compliance with internal processes as well as external reviews.

A Records Retention Schedule is meant to make your life easier. As we’ve discusses above though, finding a software solution that checks off all the absolute requirements (along with some nice-to-have features) that also fits within your budget can be challenging. Why not make it easier with FileCloud?

FileCloud’s Records Retention Scheduling System

FileCloud supports compliance with major regulations by providing a hyper-secure platform for financial services organizations to store and share data, alongside a powerful and easy-to-use records retention scheduling system. Retention scheduling in FileCloud incorporates hierarchical policies that can help financial services institutions meet compliance requirements:

• Admin Hold: This hold outranks all other policies and prevents changes/deletion of digital content for an indefinite period of time.

• Legal Hold: Freezes digital content to support information discovery or legal challenges. During a legal hold, file modifications are not permitted.

• Retention: Identifies digital content to be maintained for a specified amount of time before being deleted, moved to cold storage (archival), or released.

• Archival: Moves and stores old organizational content over the long term. No deletion is allowed until a specified time period is reached. After this time, content is moved to a specified folder for disposal.

• Trash Retention: Can be configured for automatic and permanent deletion of all files in the Trash bins or to expire with no actions

Administrators can establish and apply these retention policies to files, folders, and metadata sets, ensuring that documents entering and leaving the system follow recommended retention timelines and compliance requirements. Files and folders with an active retention policy enforce limitations or restrictions on certain activities, including deletion or manipulation/modification. Users attempting to perform an action not permitted by a retention policy will receive an error notification to call attention to the policy. Attempted file activity is also recorded in audit logs for administrative review.

Financial Services Institutions can ease their compliance burden by putting in place a robust records retention schedule. Automating compliance, retention, and security processes can help avoid expensive fines and maintain consumer trust. FileCloud’s secure system has all the required features (plus a few outstanding extras) to revolutionize your operations, stay organized, and increase efficiency.