Redtail launches compliant texting platform

In response to the growing use of texting, Redtail Technology has introduced a compliance-approved platform that enables advisers to text with clients through their firm's customer relationship management tool. Called Redtail Speak, the application complies with new regulations from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. requiring that all text-messaging conversations be recorded. Every message or document sent through the application is searchable and automatically archived, Redtail said, and is recorded daily and shared with the adviser's compliance overseers. "Rather than utilizing a variety of tools in their businesses, advisers can simply send a message from their Redtail CRM to a client's mobile number, and when the client replies via text, the message will appear in Speak," Redtail said in a release. (More: Advisers turning to text messages to communicate with clients) "As advisers pick up more digital-savvy clients, those clients are going to demand texting because they use it with every other professional in their lives," said Bill Winterberg, founder and president of FPPad, a financial services industry technology consulting firm. Mark Gilbert, chief technology officer at Hearsay Systems, which makes texting software for advisers, expects the number of advice firms using texts — which he pegs at about 10% or less of all advisers — will probably double over the next year.