Compliance shouldn’t require an army of analysts reviewing false positives or 16-week approval chains for email campaigns.
Larry Shumbres of Archive Intel joined The Wealth Advisor to explain how he built a better solution after listening to over 200 clients complain about legacy compliance products. Shumbres surveyed RIAs, asset managers, and compliance consultants about their biggest pain points.
The problems were consistent: fragmented systems requiring separate solutions for email, social media, and websites. Manual processes for scheduling reviews and extracting audit data. Keyword scanning generating astronomical false positives—one firm flagged 200,000 emails out of 2 million monthly by searching for terms like “WhatsApp” or “crypto.”
Archive Intel uses contextual AI reviewing complete sentences rather than isolated keywords. That same firm reduced flagged communications to under 200 monthly. The shift saves firms from hiring additional compliance analysts or outsourcing review processes.
Text message capture presented unique challenges. Regulatory fines exceeded $3 billion for firms failing to archive texts. Solutions requiring separate phones or specific apps failed because clients ignored them, leading to fines anyway. Archive Intel lets advisors use personal phones and numbers. The system uses contact-defined whitelisting—only communications with designated client contacts get archived, regardless of whether conversations happen through WhatsApp, Telegram, or standard SMS.
Marketing review transforms dramatically. SEC marketing rules created approval bottlenecks stretching 16 weeks at some firms. Archive Intel’s AI scans uploaded documents instantly, highlights non-compliant content, explains violations, and suggests automated fixes. Corrected documents route through selectable approval hierarchies—compliance officers, marketing officers, or executives—before storage with codes, expiration dates, and disclosures.
Humans remain essential. SEC and FINRA require people in the loop. Archive Intel incorporates this requirement—audit reports show who reviewed AI findings. Technology handles volume and speed. Humans provide judgment and final approval.
Shumbres focuses on efficiency as competitive advantage. The platform covers email, social media, websites, chats, texting, and marketing in one unified solution. Future development targets additional communication channels advisors increasingly use: Reddit, TikTok, Substack, Discord, Kakao, and WeChat.
Over 500 clients added in under two years since launch. The better mousetrap works.
