SEC Electronic Record Keeping Ruling
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a final rule regarding the electronic record keeping by investment companies and investment advisors. Following is a summary of the SEC ruling that relates to document management and record keeping.
General Requirements
The investment company, or person that maintains and preserves records on its behalf, must:
- Arrange and index the records in a way that permits easy location, access, and retrieval of any particular record.
- Provide promptly any of the following that the Commission (by its examiners or other representatives) or the directors of the company may request:
- A legible, true, and complete copy of the record in the medium and format in which it is stored.
- A legible, true, and complete printout of the record.
- Means to access, view, and print the records.
- Separately store, for the time required for preservation of the original record, a duplicate copy of the record on any medium allowed by this section.
Requirements for Electronic Storage Media
In the case of records on electronic storage media, the investment company, or person that maintains and preserves records on its behalf, must establish and maintain procedures:
- To maintain and preserve the records, so as to reasonably safeguard them from loss, alteration, or destruction.
- To limit access to the records to properly authorized personnel, the directors of the investment company, and the Commission (including its examiners and other representatives).
- To reasonably ensure that any reproduction of a non-electronic original record on electronic storage media is complete, true, and legible when retrieved.
