Securities America First Major IBD to Allow Advisors to Text Clients
Securities America has partnered with CellTrust to launch a new texting option for its financial advisors and securities licensed office staff.
Securities America, the largest independent broker-dealer subsidiary within the Ladenburg Thalmann (NYSE: LTS) organization, has partnered with CellTrust to launch a new texting option for its financial advisors and securities licensed office staff.
While not the first firm to offer texting capabilities, Securities America is believed to be the first major independent broker-dealer to allow its advisors to text their clients. The DI Wire recently reported that wirehouse Merrill Lynch also launched a texting platform utilizing a similar CellTrust app.
“Texting is becoming the public’s communication channel of choice,” said Gregory Smith, Securities America’s senior vice president of supervision. “We’re excited our advisors can now text their client for quick, casual communication, rather than go through the lengthy process of email or phoning. Texting will help keep the advisors top of mind with their clients.”
Securities America’s texting capability, which advisors began using this month, is the result of nearly two years of planning and testing, the company said.
“We’ve known for some time that texting would become an important channel of client communication for our advisors,” added Smith. “We concluded our internal research in October 2017. We then had a group of our advisors test the program, which they finished in December. The response was overwhelmingly positive.”
Research has shown response rates are higher and response times are lower with text messages, compared to email, he said.
Under FINRA regulatory guidance on texting released in April 2017, text messages must be retained as if they were written or email communications. With Securities America’s texting option, advisors download an app, CellTrust’s SL2, to their mobile device. The texts are captured with the app and stored in Securities America’s archiving platform in a manner compliant with FINRA guidance.
“If you’re an advisor trying to work with millennials, Gen Y or X, you’ll find a strong preference for text communications,” said Dan Grote, a partner at Latitude Financial Group in Denver who took part in the testing phase of the texting program. “Even baby boomers prefer to send a short, one-line text regarding trivial matters – ‘running late’ or ‘great article you posted today. I’d like to chat about it.’”
Securities America is one of the nation’s largest independent broker-dealers with more than 2,200 independent advisors and nearly $72 billion in client assets.
