Email records for registered investment advisers

RIA Email Archiving Built Around Review and Retrieval

Email is where recommendations are discussed, client questions are answered and day-to-day advisory work is documented.

Patrina helps RIA teams preserve business email in a searchable archive, organize communication review and retrieve focused records when the firm needs to understand what was said, by whom and in what context.

Request an RIA archiving demo See the email workflow

Searchable email records, not another mailbox to manage
Review workflows with flags, assignments and follow-up
Access controls, audit history and reporting for the people responsible

Email governance workflow from policy flag and reviewer assignment to documented disposition

Financial firms that trust Patrina

Business communications moving through capture, accountable review and focused retrieval — **An archive should complete the workflow**Useful RIA email archiving connects capture, accountable review and focused retrieval so the team can answer a defined business or regulatory request.

From communication to usable record

Give communications a clear path from capture to accountable action

Communication records can span advisers, teams, domains and shared mailboxes. Patrina's compliant archiving platform brings supported sources into a searchable archive with tools for preservation, review, permissions and reporting.

The firm gains a more structured path for correspondence review and focused retrieval when the team needs to answer a question or produce records.

Bring multiple sources into one centralized archive
Patrina helps firms connect and organize their supported email systems, domains, advisors and shared mailboxes within a centralized archiving environment. Patrina can also import historical email, allowing firms to bring past communications into the same searchable archive as ongoing correspondence.

This gives the firm a clear view of what communications are being captured, where they are coming from and who they are associated with. Compliance teams can then search and retrieve correspondence across the organization from one centralized system, rather than relying on individual mailboxes or disconnected sources.
Turn policy into visible work
Patrina’s lexicons, sampling, search, assignments, flags, and escalation tools help route selected correspondence to the right reviewer. Review activity stays connected to the archived message.

The firm sets its review criteria, while Patrina gives authorized users a structured place to record decisions and follow-up.
Quickly Find the Records You Need
Patrina makes it easier for compliance teams to find specific communications without searching individual mailboxes. Powerful search and filtering tools allow users to narrow results by advisor, client, email address, subject and date range.

Access controls ensure users only see information they are authorized to access, while audit trails and reporting provide visibility into search activity.

When a firm needs to respond to an audit, investigation or regulatory request, Patrina can assist with locating and producing the required records. Instead of piecing together information from multiple systems, firms can work from one centralized archive.

See Patrina's RIA email archiving workflow

Email-specific scopeEvaluate the mail systems, users and addresses the RIA actually needs to place inside its archive.

Reviewable by designMove from passive retention to an organized workflow for sampling, searching, flagging and follow-up.

Focused retrievalFind the correspondence relevant to a client, employee, topic or defined date range without treating every result as equally responsive.

RIA email operations

Capabilities that connect the message, the review and the audit trail

Find and Revisit Relevant Communications

Compliance teams often need to search for the same types of communications repeatedly, but rebuilding complex searches each time can be time-consuming and inconsistent. Firms may need to identify all communications involving a specific advisor, client, topic or date range.

Patrina provides full indexing, saved searches and repeatable search criteria to make these reviews faster and more consistent. Compliance teams can save and reuse searches instead of rebuilding them each time.

Patrina can also demonstrate the specific searchable fields, search operators, attachment handling and export options available for the firm’s email sources.

Identify Potentially Risky Communications

Compliance teams cannot manually review every message for language that may require attention. Without automated flagging, potentially important communications can be missed or require significant time to identify.

Patrina allows firms to create customizable lexicons and message flags based on the words and phrases they want to monitor. Potentially relevant messages can be flagged for review and kept connected to the original communication, helping compliance teams focus their attention where it matters most.

Patrina helps identify messages for review, while the firm determines the appropriate context, response and follow-up.

Automate Compliance Reviews and Assignments

Compliance teams need a consistent way to review communications, assign follow-up and ensure potential issues are not overlooked. Relying on individual reviewers to manage this process can make reviews inconsistent and difficult to track.

Patrina supports percentage-based sampling, automated review assignments and reassignment or escalation tools. These capabilities help firms create structured review workflows, assign items to the appropriate compliance personnel and track how each review is handled.

Patrina can help turn communication review into a consistent, accountable process with clear ownership and follow-up.

Control Access Based on User Responsibilities

Compliance managers need to ensure their compliance professionals only have access to the communications they are authorized to review. This becomes especially important when firms have multiple offices, sensitive communications or different levels of compliance responsibility.

Patrina provides group-based permissions that allow administrators to control which communications different users can access. This helps protect sensitive information while giving each reviewer the access needed to perform their role.

Firms can configure access based on roles such as Message Reviewer, Compliance Officer, CCO, or Administrator, creating a more secure and controlled compliance environment.

Maintain a Complete Compliance History

When firms change systems or migrate historical communications, they need to preserve both the records and the history surrounding them. Without a clear audit trail and reliable migration process, important information can be difficult to verify or retrieve.

Patrina provides audit trails and legacy-message import capabilities to help firms maintain continuity between historical and current communications. Audit history provides visibility into activity within the system, while legacy imports allow past messages to remain available in the searchable archive.

This helps firms maintain a consistent, accessible record of communications while supporting audits, reviews and regulatory requests.

Simplify Regulatory Reporting and Record Production

Responding to an audit, examination or regulatory request can be time-consuming when compliance teams must gather communications, review records and prepare documentation under tight deadlines. Firms need an efficient way to identify and produce the required records.

Patrina provides reporting and record-production capabilities to help firms respond to regulatory requests more efficiently. Patrina’s team can also assist customers with producing the records needed for an examiner or formal request.

This gives firms a more structured process for locating, reviewing and delivering communications, helping reduce the time and effort required to respond to regulatory requests.

Demonstrate the Digital Message Review Workflow

Patrina will demonstrate how Singular manages the complete compliance review lifecycle for digital communications. The workflow shows how messages are assigned to the appropriate reviewer, reviewed and escalated when necessary, dispositioned with a documented reason, and maintained with a complete audit trail.

Compliance managers and CCOs retain visibility into outstanding, completed, and escalated reviews, even when review responsibilities change.

Request a workflow-based demo

Source coverage

Archive email from the systems your RIA has approved for business

Patrina captures business email from supported Microsoft Exchange, Office 365 and Google Mail environments. Your team identifies the users, shared mailboxes and addresses that need to be archived.

For firms using additional channels, Patrina also supports Bloomberg Messages, Microsoft Teams and Slack. Include these sources in your broader investment-advisor archiving plan.

Exchange, Office 365, Google Mail

Catalog the hosted or deployed Exchange environment the firm uses, identify which mailboxes are in scope, and confirm that emails are landing in the archive.

Bloomberg Messages

Establish a secure connection between Bloomberg’s Messaging server and Patrina’s processing agent, capture user communications, and process content for archiving and supervisory review.

Microsoft Teams

Patrina documents your firm’s Teams users and Channels for compliance capture. Patrina seamlessly integrates with your Teams accounts to simplify capture, processing, and review for compliance.

Slack Messaging

With Patrina Slack conversations can be preserved for regulatory recordkeeping, searched when needed, and made available to compliance teams for supervision, audits, investigations, and regulatory requests.

The operating problem

Define the Correspondence the Firm Must Understand and Retrieve

Email is central to how advisors conduct business. They use it to respond to clients, discuss recommendations, provide documents, clarify instructions and make decisions—all of which can create important business records.

The challenge for compliance teams is that these records are distributed across employees, conversations, attachments, dates and mailboxes.

Singular brings those communications together in a centralized, searchable archive, giving compliance teams the ability to quickly find, review and retrieve the correspondence they need for supervision, audits, investigations and regulatory requests.

A Complete Mailbox Can Still Create an Incomplete Search

Simply archiving an entire mailbox does not guarantee that a firm can find the right communication when it matters. Names change, clients may use multiple email addresses, employees may communicate through shared mailboxes, and a single business issue can span multiple conversations and threads.

Patrina addresses this challenge by providing the tools you need to organize communications with the identity, source and searchable data needed to connect related correspondence.

This allows compliance teams to search across the firm and retrieve relevant sent and received messages based on the person, subject, date range and other key criteria.

The measure of an effective archive is not simply “Can we store email?” It is “Can we reliably find the complete, relevant conversation when compliance needs it?” Patrina is designed to make that retrieval process faster, more complete and more actionable.

Review can collapse into an undocumented reading exercise

A small compliance team cannot treat every retained message as equally significant. It needs a repeatable way to apply firm policy, assign work, sample or search, flag a message, record follow-up, and distinguish completed review from an untouched result.

Without that workflow, the archive may hold the communication but leave the RIA rebuilding the review history from personal notes or spreadsheets.

Production pressure exposes earlier design choices

An examination request, internal inquiry or client issue rarely asks for “all email.” It asks for a particular body of correspondence.

The team follows a defined search sequence:

Translate the scope into people, addresses, dates and concepts.
Test the search.
Remove obvious noise.
Preserve the responsive context.
Document what it produced.

Indexing, permissions and export options that seemed secondary during procurement become central when the clock is running.

Bring Patrina the workflow that is hardest to coordinate.

Use a real handoff to evaluate fit, ownership and visibility.

Request a live demo

The moments that test the archive

Three Message Compliance Workflows to Configure Before Go-Live

Routine Review of Advisor Correspondence

The firm has established a periodic supervisory review of selected business communications and needs a consistent workflow for identifying, assigning, reviewing, and dispositioning messages.

The CCO or designated reviewer, an alternate or escalated reviewer, and the advisory employee whose communication may require context or follow-up.

Patrina’s review tool provides the workflow for managing the review process. Messages are identified based on the firm's configured review criteria and placed into the appropriate review workflow. Assigned reviewers can open the complete message thread, evaluate the communication in context, flag or escalate items requiring additional attention, document the appropriate disposition, and complete the review.

CCO visibility: With Patrina, maintain the review history and status, allowing compliance leadership to see what has been assigned, what has been reviewed, what remains outstanding, and which messages were escalated or dispositioned.

Patrina turns email supervision into a structured, repeatable workflow—from message selection and assignment through review, escalation, disposition, and completion. Instead of relying on disconnected notes or manual tracking, the firm has a centralized record of the review activity and the decisions made. The RIA retains responsibility for its policies, review standards, and supervisory conclusions, while Patrina provides the operational workflow to execute and document those decisions.

Request a live demo

Rule context without category shortcuts

Define Which Messages Require Compliance Review

For investment advisers, the compliance process begins with determining which communications fall within the firm's books-and-records and supervisory requirements.

SEC Rule 204-2 identifies written communications that must be maintained when they relate to specified subjects, including investment recommendations or advice, the movement of funds or securities, orders, and certain performance-related matters.

How Patrina Supports the Workflow

Patrina enables firms to apply their established compliance criteria to digital communications and identify messages that warrant review. Once identified, messages can enter the firm's configured review workflow for assignment, review, escalation, and disposition.

The key consideration is not simply whether a communication is an email. It is what the communication contains and whether it relates to a subject requiring preservation or supervisory attention.

Patrina provides the workflow and record of compliance activity that allows the RIA to apply its policies consistently and document how those messages were reviewed.

Discuss your email recordkeeping workflow

Configure Correspondence Review Around the Applicable Record Categories

The RIA should establish, with qualified compliance or legal counsel, which communications are required records, which regulatory requirements and firm policies apply, and the appropriate retention periods for each category.

How Patrina Supports the Workflow

Patrina allows the firm to configure its compliance workflows around those established requirements rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach. Messages can be identified according to the firm's defined criteria and routed into the appropriate review, assignment, escalation, and disposition workflows.

The platform provides the operational framework for applying the firm's policies consistently while maintaining the associated review history and audit trail. The RIA determines what constitutes a record and how it should be handled; Patrina provides the workflow to help the firm execute and document those decisions.

Preserve Accessibility and Integrity of Electronic Records

For electronic records, the RIA should establish procedures that address the applicable regulatory requirements for accessibility, retrieval, security, and preservation.

This includes ensuring records can be readily located and retrieved, providing copies or access when required, maintaining appropriate duplicates, protecting records from unauthorized alteration or destruction, and ensuring retrieved records remain complete, accurate, and legible.

How Patrina Supports the Workflow

Patrina provides the infrastructure and workflow to help firms manage electronic communications as accessible, controlled compliance records. Preserved messages can be organized, searched, retrieved, and reviewed, while access can be managed according to the firm's defined roles and permissions.

Patrina also maintains the associated compliance activity, including message-review history, assignments, dispositions, and audit information, helping the firm demonstrate how electronic communications were managed throughout the review process.

The RIA remains responsible for establishing and validating its recordkeeping and retention policies against the applicable rules and its specific circumstances; Patrina provides the technology and workflow to help operationalize those requirements.

Use the RIA’s Applicable Recordkeeping Requirements

SEC Rule 17a-4 applies to broker-dealers and is not automatically the governing standard for every RIA. The SEC has historically recognized different electronic-recordkeeping requirements for investment advisers, including not imposing a WORM-format requirement on advisers.

Dual registrants and affiliated organizations may face overlapping requirements, so the firm should rely on qualified counsel or compliance professionals to determine the applicable framework.

Account for State Requirements and Firm Policy

State-registered advisers should evaluate the requirements of each applicable state, along with their own policies, contracts, litigation needs, and risk programs.

Retention and review workflows should be configured after these requirements have been identified and incorporated into the firm's compliance procedures.

Regulatory context: Requirements vary based on the firm's registration, activities, records, policies, and applicable law. This content is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. The application of these requirements may vary based on the firm's specific circumstances and applicable regulatory framework.

A practical buying decision

What Test Should an RIA Perform Before Choosing Email Archiving Software?

The strongest RIA-specific demonstration should test the complete review workflow: message capture, correspondence search, assignment, review, disposition, permissions, and continuity when responsibilities change.

01
Can the Vendor Demonstrate Complete and Reliable Email Capture?
Can you show us that every email source in our environment is captured, monitored, and accounted for?

Test active and former users, aliases, shared mailboxes, domains, and systems that send email on the firm's behalf. Confirm how capture is monitored, how changes are handled, and how historical records are brought into the archive.
02
Can the Platform Quickly Reconstruct the Complete Client Conversation?
Can you show us how a reviewer can find the right correspondence and understand the entire conversation without piecing together fragmented messages?

Test a client with multiple addresses, an adviser, shared mailbox, attachments, and a defined date range. Confirm identity matching, complete-thread access, search refinement, and the ability to preserve the search criteria.
03
Can the Platform Turn a Flagged Message Into a Documented Compliance Decision?
Can you demonstrate the complete journey from message selection to reviewer assignment, review, escalation, disposition, and completion?

Confirm that each step is captured, that dispositions are controlled appropriately, and that the CCO can see the resulting review history. The objective is a consistent, defensible workflow—not simply an archive of emails.
04
Can Compliance Maintain Control When Review Responsibility Changes?
Can you demonstrate that review work and historical correspondence remain under control when an adviser changes roles, a reviewer is unavailable, or responsibility is reassigned?

Test adviser, reviewer, alternate reviewer, CCO, and administrator roles. Demonstrate reassignment, escalation, and adviser departure while confirming that the appropriate successor retains access to the relevant correspondence and outstanding reviews.
05
Can the CCO Clearly Explain What Happened During a Review?
Starting with a completed review, can you show the CCO exactly why the message was selected, who reviewed it, what they found, what action was taken, and how the matter was ultimately closed?

The review history should provide a clear, traceable record of selection, assignment, review, disposition, escalation, reassignment, and closure—giving compliance leadership confidence that the firm's supervisory process was actually followed.

A better evaluation starts with your workflow.

Bring one real client or record journey and ask Patrina to show how the platform supports it.

Request a live demo

Common RIA questions

Email Archiving for Your RIA: Questions to Resolve Before Implementation

A live Patrina demonstration shows how messages move from capture and identification through assignment, review, escalation, disposition, and reporting, giving your RIA a clear view of how the platform operates in practice.

See Patrina in Action

How does the firm ensure that client addresses, adviser aliases, and shared mailboxes are captured, mapped, and searchable?

Patrina demonstrates how identities are mapped and how reviewers search across related addresses and mailboxes. This gives compliance confidence that relevant correspondence is accessible without relying on fragmented mailbox searches.

See Patrina archiving in action

Test Patrina against the records and communications your firm must manage.

Bring a real process to the conversation. A focused demonstration can show the relevant product path, clarify configuration questions and identify what your team should validate next.

Walk through a representative workflow
Confirm the systems, channels and roles involved
Define the next evaluation step with Patrina

Review Patrina archiving for your firm Book a demo

RIA Email Archiving Built Around Review and Retrieval

Financial firms that trust Patrina

Give communications a clear path from capture to accountable action