The electronic records retention requirements of SEC rule 17a-4 or the SEC Books and Records rule, defines the following types of data must be retained:

• Emails and other communications
• Trade Blotters
• Asset and Liability Ledgers
• Income Ledgers
• Customer Accounts
• Order Tickets
• Trade Confirmations
• Trial Balances and various other related documents
• Systems Configuration data for recovery of critical systems and data

The problem today, especially for small firms is that this data is often contained in so many different format, in word, excel, PDFs scanned records or contact databases. Also, FINRA firms want to take advantage of the cloud to store this data, its not just saved on PCs or servers in head office anymore. Therefore, the important thing needed now is an automated method to capture all this dispersed data, transfer it to the designated D3P for retention as required by SEC rule 17a-4.