Leading companies leverage multiple social media platforms to connect with their prospects and customers. More recently, financial services organizations have taken notice of the need for a social media strategy as the social audience grows and begins to trust the information coming from that channel. In fact 38% of financial services companies have found new clients on LinkedIn.
In this blog, LinkedIn and Social SafeGuard, will explain how financial services companies can use the newest tool from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, to generate more business while ensuring regulatory compliance, avoiding fines, and social media gaffes.
Social Media as a Necessity
In an industry built on trust and transparency, customers are not simply looking to trust the brand, but more importantly the individuals they speak with—the bankers, agents, and advisors themselves. It is crucial for these individuals to share helpful information with their networks on social media.
When LinkedIn and TNS teamed up to survey decision makers at 998 North American SMBs (businesses with revenue between $1M and $49.9M), they found some compelling statistics about thought leadership.
49% of those polled use social media to learn and share resources
72% of social media "learners" mentioned that, in addition to gathering insights and information, they also used it to source business partners and suppliers.
79% of respondents indicated that industry specific news was the most relevant form of content, which was the number 1 response.
Sales Navigator allows companies to increase the reach of their voice and more. LinkedIn is a platform built for consuming content, as respondents are 21% more open to receiving financial information on LinkedIn than on Facebook and Twitter. Social media is also a resource for people when determining their financial needs. In fact, 1 in 4 currently use LinkedIn for financial purposes [1]. But, as the financial services industry is well aware, social media comes with inherent compliance risks. Fines from FINRA are increasing year after year and according to Blue Hill Research, "a company loses an average of $3.5 million from one social media incident? Here is the breakdown: direct financial costs ($641K), reputation damage ($638K), lost revenue ($619K), reduction in stock price ($1M) and litigation costs ($650K)."
Transparent solution prevents loss of revenue and company value due to regulatory violations
To avoid these fines a company needs to implement a transparent compliance system that can keep up with the complex social needs of financial institutions, identify inbound threats and protect intellectual property and trade secrets. A solution like Social SafeGuard allows for any end user, agent, broker, etc. to use all necessary social channels, and prevents those users from being burdened or worried about onerous compliance regulations.
Social SafeGuard Capabilities:
Demonstrate a full audit trail of conversations, where policy violations occur, why posts are blocked or removed and how these violations were immediately resolved.
Archive all message and can be available at any time.
o This archiving and e-discovery capability is mandated by regulatory agencies around the world for any business communication, including social media.
o Automatic archiving also prevents the process of end users having to manually archive, through screen shots or other means, each message they send on social media.
Look within attached files on messages
o This feature prevents the careless leaking of personally identifiable information and company intellectual property
Policy management to specific industry and company needs
o Pre-built policy library allows for immediate monitoring and organizations can modify or create their own policies and custom policy rules
Intelligent compliance engine with pattern and contextual analysis
A non-transparent solution, such as a blacklist or a simple word search, does not look inside files, and provides no advanced text analysis only creates more social risk for a company and violates existing regulatory requirements. Manual monitoring works on a small scale, but is subject to human error and becomes prohibitively expensive on an enterprise scale.
Advantages of Having a System in Place
Regulatory bodies have indicated and shown that if an offense has occurred but a compliance program, such as Social SafeGuard is in place, a company could lower their fine by up to 80% of the base fine (from $100 million to $20 million).
The power of social media, and LinkedIn particularly, to connect companies to customers and effect their purchasing decision is indisputable. LinkedIn Sales Navigator combined with a transparent compliance system allows companies to continue to innovate and be present when communicating with their customers.
LinkedIn’s financial services business has been educating customers through their Sales Navigator program, allowing teams to leverage training, relationship management, and actionable insights about prospects and customers to grow their business. To learn more about how they can help you, please visit https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/financial-services. To learn more about Social SafeGuard and how they can ensure compliance for your organization please visit: http://www.socialsafeguard.com
[1] LinkedIn Global Survey of 305 High Net Worth Individuals, May 2014