Most brokers are aware that Commission Rule 58A .0108 requires that all transactional records be retained for three years. Most brokers are good at retaining contracts, agreements, money trails, closing statements, and such. But what about those pesky text messages that are frequently used to communicate orders, approvals, and questions by clients or other transactional parties? Where and how are they kept? Are they available to be provided to Commission representatives without prior notice as required by rule?
If your heart just skipped a beat in panic, you are not alone. It is not uncommon for brokers under investigation to be unable to provide pivotal documentation because it was by text message that is no longer available to the broker.
How can that be, you ask. It usually revolves around the broker assuming that their phone/text service provider keeps all text messages indefinitely. Sadly, this is seldom the case. It seems that most carriers scrub/delete call records and/or text messages in a fairly short timeframe unless the phone owner has changed the retention settings to a longer period of time; some carriers offer “forever” as an option. Retaining such data in the Cloud is also a good storage option.
Moral of the article: don’t assume that you will be able to retrieve a needed text unless you have made specific retention choices with your device and/or service provider.