Today’s real estate broker article focuses on the State of Illinois. If you are broker in Illinois, you’re required to hold transaction records, escrow records and emplyment records for five (5) years. We always provide links to the actual FAQs for the regulations in case you want to research more information for yourself http://www.idfpr.com/faq/BRE/toggleBRERealEstateFaq.asp. Here’s a link to Rule 1450.180 in the Illinois Real Estate License Act http://www.illinoisrealtor.org/Member/government/issues/licenselaw.pdf it’s on page 90 of this 122 page PDF.

This seems to be mid-range in the regulations across the U.S. so far. The record retention range seems to be 3-7 years and Illinois falls right in the middle. Be that as it may, if you’re a broker in Illinois and are looking for a method to backup your digital records, our online storage solution will definitely satisfy the intent of the regulatory rules.

Basically all you’ll need to do is install some software and then configure the backup calendar to schedule backups to occur when you want them. Once your backups are complete, you are sent a verification report by email to confirm that your backup was successful.

We always think people feel more comfortable calling us directly to speak with one of our knowledgeable Backup Specialists, so if you’d like to discuss your backup needs, just call us 1 877 310-8224.

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After reading the SEC regulations and looking specifically for the sections that pertain to file storage and retention periods, we are glad to report that our product continues to satisfy the intent of those laws.

To put it simply, the SEC outlines the record retention period of 6 years, however, several types of records can be held for three years but in the end, the SEC recommends storing all files for the life of the enterprise. This is recommended as a best practice. Why you ask?

Because you never know when you might need those files.

Now, I can’t imagine the SEC had the foresight to suggest this because they knew something about future storage costs, but I suspect that they suggested this so smaller broker dealers could comply without much effort. In essence, “if you wanna cover your behind, just save everything!”.

Well, today you can do that. Saving all your digital records isn’t expensive and frankly, it’s really easy to do.

Mind you, if you wanted to delete records after their life-cycle expires, well, that’s easy to do as well. You simply preset the length of time you want to retain those files and viola. They’ll be stored till then at which point they’ll be moved to the retention bin for an administrator to authorize the final deletion of those records.

The choice is yours. Either way, we’ve got your backup.

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As we conclude 2010, FINRA and the SEC will be introducing a few new requirements in 2011. We’ve blogged about the new encryption rule that FINRA mandates effective December 29th, 2010, but brokers, dealers and members such keep in mind that throughout the official regulations the retention guidelines are referenced several times.

In effect, important records need to be maintained for seven (7) years or longer if litigation is involved (add two (2) additional years). Mind you, if you read the regulations carefully, they suggest to keep files forever as a best practice. We’re sure if some companies keep paper copies of records then they wouldn’t want to follow this policy, but imagine if your office was paperless. Adhering to a best practice becomes easy. Going paperless is probably the bigger mountain to overcome. We offer document scanning services for those businesses who are looking to be more green in the coming years. Digitizing records is not an overnight project. In fact, it takes a little time and a strategic plan. We’ve worked with businesses who wanted to start out digital-only, we’ve seen companies convert before there was too much paper and we’ve seen large legal firms convert millions of pages to easily referenced digital copies.

Since most files are born-digital these days, we think there is some virtue in going paperless because now businesses can implement policies that wouldn’t have been considered several years ago. Not only are companies now able to act more intelligently but they can be socially responsible as well and we’ve found that one small step in the right direction is better than standing still.

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