Compliance · FINRA & SEC Books and Records
Books-and-Records Obligations and Offsite Custody
This is the most prescriptive record-keeping regime we encounter. Rules address not only what must be kept, but how it must be preserved and how quickly it must be produced. Examiners ask custody questions, and custody questions need custody answers.
Bring your retention schedule. We will tell you what it actually costs to meet it.
Read this first. This page is general background on how physical custody supports a compliance program. It isnot legal advice, it does not state retention periods, and it does not certify that any arrangement satisfies any rule. Requirements change and vary by firm. Get the answer from your own counsel or compliance officer, then tell us what you need us to do.
Scope
Who this applies to
Broker-dealers, registered investment advisers, and firms carrying SEC or FINRA record-keeping obligations.
The recurring themes
- Preservation of records in a durable, non-alterable form.
- Prompt production on request, within defined expectations.
- Documented accountability for where records are held.
- Separate storage of duplicate records.
Our part
What custody actually contributes
- Air-gapped physical custody — media in the vault cannot be altered remotely because it cannot be reached at all.
- Timestamped custody history per item, producible for an examiner.
- Scheduled retrieval plus 24/7 emergency retrieval for contracted clients.
- A separate hardened site, deliberately not co-located with regional data centers.
Get this right
The common misreading
The frequent misreading is treating this as a duration rule. The duration is the easy part. The harder expectations concern the form the record is kept in and how quickly it can be produced, which is why the same content can satisfy the requirement on one medium and not on another. A firm that has focused only on how long it keeps things may still have a gap.
Evidence
What tends to be asked for
Examinations tend to ask how a record is preserved, how it is indexed, how quickly it can be retrieved, and who has access. Physical custody answers part of that — where the media is, who holds it, what the access record shows. It does not answer the questions about medium and retrievability, which are decided by the systems and formats a firm chooses. We are one component in that picture and we would rather describe our part precisely than imply we cover the whole.
Said plainly
What we do not do
We provide the physical custody and evidence layer. We are not a designated third party for regulatory attestation purposes, we do not certify that your program meets any rule, and we do not advise on which records are covered. Your compliance counsel owns that.
Common questions
- Are you a designated third party?
- No, and we do not claim to be. We provide physical custody and custody evidence.
- Can you produce custody history for an examiner?
- Yes, for any item we hold — every movement is scanned and timestamped.
- Does air-gapping satisfy non-alterability?
- It contributes to it physically. Whether your overall arrangement satisfies a specific rule is for your counsel to determine.
Other frameworks
Bring your retention schedule.
We will tell you plainly what custody covers and what it does not. That is a more useful conversation than a compliance claim.