advisor
J. Okafor · IAR
iMessage archiving,
built for RIAs.
Your advisors text clients from their iPhones in Apple Messages, and every business conversation is preserved as an SEC Rule 204-2 record, including the messages someone later edits or deletes. Nothing changes about how anyone texts. One archive for texting, email, WhatsApp, and your website, searchable at exam time.
A text is a record when its content is advisory business, not because of the app it traveled on. Rule 204-2(a)(7) turns on what the message says. See our SEC and FINRA archiving requirements guide for the rule text. Here to save personal chats from your own iPhone? Apple's export and backup options cover that; this page is for firms with recordkeeping obligations.
9:41● ● ●
Thursday · 10:22 AM
Hey, saw the market drop this morning. Should I move the whole account to cash?
Let's not react to one day. Your plan already holds two years of spending in short-term bonds, so nothing forces a sale here.
Want to hop on a call this afternoon to walk through it?
Yes, that helps. 3pm works. Thank you.
⬢ sha-256 · 7c14·b0e9·2af5
4 messages · client text thread
J. Okafor (IAR) ↔ M. Alvarez · advice on a market-timing question, preserved as a Rule 204-2 record.
policy · review
Surfaced to CCO for sign-off
The message your advisor sent from their personal iPhone still counts.
The SEC's recordkeeping initiative has charged more than 100 firms and imposed more than $2 billion in penalties since December 2021, sweeping in investment advisers alongside broker-dealers. The violation is not what any one message said. It is that a covered business communication lived off-channel, on a platform the firm never captured and could not produce. iMessage is the off-channel gap most firms miss, because advisors text clients from the phone in their pocket. For the full requirements picture, read our archiving requirements guide.
Why iMessage is the industry's hard channel.
An SMS text crosses a carrier's network, so a number-based archive can read it. iMessage never touches that network. When both people are on iPhones it routes through Apple, encrypted, and lands on the two devices and nowhere else. Delete the thread and an uncaptured copy is gone. Every common workaround tries to reach into that world, and each one has a catch.
- –A sync agent copies messages off the advisor's phone. It depends on that phone staying connected and unlocked, and a message deleted before the next copy is simply gone.
- –A device backup captures a snapshot, not a continuous record, so anything sent and deleted between backups never lands in it.
- –Mirroring the thread to a second device inherits the same gap: an edit or a delete-for-everyone can reach the mirror before anyone preserves the original.
- –Disabling iMessage to force plain SMS lets a number-based archive read the text, but advisors resent the downgrade and route around it, and RCS reopens the gap.
- –A second-number app routes a separate business line through an archive, but clients keep texting the number the advisor has always used, so those threads stay off-channel.
Every one of these chases the iMessage protocol or a copy of the phone, and each breaks at the moment that matters most: when a message is edited or deleted.
You don't have to capture the iMessage protocol to archive every business text.
Your firm adds RegFin's archive line to client conversations. Advisors keep the phone in their pocket, the number clients already have, and Apple Messages. From then on, every message in those conversations is preserved and sealed, including the ones a sender later edits or deletes. Nothing to install, nothing to change.
01 · Add
Add the archive line
The firm adds RegFin's archive contact to client text threads. Advisors text from their own iPhones, and clients keep texting the number they already have.
02 · Preserve
Every message, the moment it's sent
Everything in those threads, SMS, MMS, and RCS, one-to-one and group, is preserved as it happens. An edit or a deletion later leaves the original intact and records the attempt itself.
03 · Seal
Sealed to WORM
Each message is hashed and sealed to write-once storage where no one, not even RegFin, can alter or delete it. From there it is full-text and semantically searchable.
What happens when someone deletes a text.
A message can be unsent or edited on a phone. It cannot be unsent from the record.
The record keeps three things
The original, the revision, and the attempt
- ✓The original message, exactly as it was first sent.
- ✓The full revision history when a sender edits it.
- ✓A record of the deletion or edit attempt itself, a reviewable event on its own.
Why it holds up
The test no copy of the phone passes
Approaches that read a copy of the device only hold whatever was on it at the last sync. If a message is deleted before that copy runs, there is nothing left to preserve.
Because the archive line sits inside the conversation, the record is written the moment a message exists. A later deletion changes what the client sees, never what the archive holds.
Two ways to cover the channel. Pick your level.
Most firms start with the archive line on the phones advisors already carry. Firms that want every message captured, with no reliance on advisor habits, issue company phones instead.
Tier 1 · Archive line
Works with the phones your advisors already have
- ✓Advisors keep their own iPhones, numbers, and Apple Messages.
- ✓The firm's archive line is added to client conversations; every message in them is preserved.
- ✓Selective by design: only threads that include the archive line are archived, so personal threads never are.
- ✓Nothing installed on anyone's personal phone.
Tier 2 · Company phones
A company phone that archives itself
- ✓Your firm buys the phones; RegFin sets them up and manages them.
- ✓Every message on the device is archived automatically, with no per-thread setup.
- ✓Complete capture by design, with zero reliance on advisor discipline.
- ✓The same sealed WORM record and one review as everything else.
iMessage is the wedge. The rest of your records come with it.
The same platform that archives your advisors' texts keeps every other channel a firm has to produce, under one policy engine and one review.
Deletion-proof
Text messages
SMS, MMS, and RCS through the archive line, one-to-one and group. Every message preserved; edits and deletions survive.
WhatsApp Business messages, media, and documents, captured and sealed in the same archive as every other channel.
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace mailboxes, with full headers, attachments, and full-text search. See communications archiving.
Website
Page-level snapshots of your marketing pages, blog, and PDF disclosures, versioned so you can see the site as it stood on any day.
AI surveillance
One filter reads every channel for misleading claims, off-channel intent, and complaints, then hands each flag to a person to decide.
One archive, one contract
RegFin built the capture layer itself, so nothing sits between capture and the archive. Every channel lands in the same searchable, sealed record, reviewed and produced from a single place. See the full archiving platform.
Kept long enough. Provably unchanged.
Rule 204-2 sets outcomes for adviser records: indexed, reproducible, and safeguarded from loss or alteration. RegFin meets them and lets you set the window.
01 · Seal
SHA-256, then WORM
Every message is hashed and sealed to write-once storage, tamper-evident from the first byte and beyond anyone's reach to edit.
02 · Store
No one can alter it
Once a record lands in write-once storage, no one can change or remove it, not even RegFin.
03 · Retain
Five-year floor
Rule 204-2(e)(1) keeps adviser records for at least five years, the first two years in an appropriate office. RegFin defaults to six and lets you configure it.
04 · Produce
Exam export
Filter by advisor, client, channel, and date, then export a searchable set with checksums for an examiner request.
Your questions, answered.
Yes, when the content is advisory business. Advisers Act Rule 204-2(a)(7) turns on what a written communication says, not the app it traveled on, so a text about advice, client funds, or an order is a record just like an email. A message setting up lunch is not. A firm that is also a broker-dealer keeps the same records under Exchange Act Rule 17a-4, and one WORM archive satisfies both. Verify the current rule text at the linked sources before relying on it.
There is no archive button in Apple's Messages app, and Apple's support community confirms an archive feature has never existed, so individuals export conversations manually or keep device backups. For a regulated firm the answer is still yes. RegFin preserves business texting automatically: conversations that include the firm's archive line are carried on channels whose records are preserved completely, including messages someone later deletes or edits.
Yes. Your advisors keep texting from their iPhones in Apple Messages. Conversations that include the firm's archive line are automatically carried on channels whose records the archive preserves completely, including messages someone later edits or deletes. Nothing to install, nothing to change. Post-iOS-18 group threads keep the rich experience: reactions, typing indicators, read receipts, and quality media.
The archived record holds. It keeps the original message, the full revision history if a sender edits it, and a record of the deletion or edit attempt itself, which is a reviewable event under your surveillance rules. Because the record is written the moment a message exists, a later deletion changes what the client sees on the phone, never what the archive holds.
No. With the archive line, advisors keep their own iPhone, their own number, and Apple Messages, and only conversations that include the archive line are archived. For firms that want every message captured with no reliance on advisor habits, there are company phones: the firm buys the devices, RegFin manages them, and every message on them is archived automatically. See the two levels.
Under Rule 204-2(e)(1), adviser records must be kept in an easily accessible place for not less than five years from the end of the fiscal year of the last entry, the first two years in an appropriate office. Broker-dealers preserve communications for three years under Rule 17a-4(b)(4). RegFin defaults to six years and lets you configure it per firm.
Yes. Every message is sealed to WORM (write once, read many) storage where records cannot be altered or deleted. That safeguarding meets Rule 204-2 on the advisory side, and the same format satisfies the broker-dealer requirement in Exchange Act Rule 17a-4(f) and, for FINRA members, FINRA Rule 4511. One sealed archive holds up for RIAs and dually registered firms alike.
On a personal iPhone you can only approximate it by exporting the conversation or backing up the device, since Messages has no archive-and-keep option. With RegFin the question goes away. Archiving happens off the device, so the conversation stays on the phone exactly as it is while the sealed record accumulates separately, whether or not anyone later deletes the thread.
Cover the channel your advisors already use.
Watch a live text survive an edit and a delete-for-everyone, and see how the rest of your records fit the same archive. Have a look at pricing or start with the RIA compliance guide.
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