Why Financial Institutions Cannot Afford to Ignore Website Archiving
Financial services is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world. Banks, asset managers, broker-dealers, insurance companies, and investment advisers operate under a dense web of regulations that govern virtually every aspect of their public communications – including what appears on their websites.
Yet many financial institutions still treat their websites as ephemeral marketing channels rather than what they actually are: regulated communications that must be captured, preserved, and made available for regulatory examination at any time.
This guide explains why website archiving is a regulatory necessity for financial services organisations, which regulations apply, and how automated web archiving technology reduces compliance risk while protecting institutions against enforcement actions and litigation.
The Regulatory Landscape
Financial services websites are subject to oversight from multiple regulatory bodies, each with specific requirements for how public-facing content must be preserved.
SEC and FINRA (United States)
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority impose extensive recordkeeping requirements on broker-dealers and investment advisers. SEC Rule 17a-4 requires broker-dealers to preserve business communications and records for specified periods, while FINRA Rule 2210 governs communications with the public – including website content.
FINRA Rule 2210 classifies websites as “retail communications,” meaning they are subject to content standards, supervisory review requirements, and recordkeeping obligations. Every page on a broker-dealer’s website that discusses products, services, performance data, or investment strategies constitutes a retail communication that must be archived and available for FINRA examination.
FINRA Rule 4511 further requires firms to make and preserve books and records as prescribed by FINRA rules and applicable securities laws. Website content that constitutes advertising or sales material falls squarely within this requirement.
FCA (United Kingdom)
The Financial Conduct Authority requires regulated firms to maintain adequate records of their financial promotions. Under the FCA Handbook, specifically COBS 4 and SYSC 9, firms must retain copies of all financial promotions, including website content, and make them available for FCA review. The retention period is generally a minimum of three years from the date the communication was last made.
FINMA (Switzerland)
The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority requires supervised institutions to maintain proper records of their communications. Under the Financial Services Act (FinSA) and its implementing ordinance, financial service providers must ensure that advertising is identifiable as such and that records of promotional materials – including websites – are maintained.
MiFID II (European Union)
Under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II, investment firms operating in the EU must keep records of all services, activities, and transactions sufficient to enable the competent authority to fulfil its supervisory tasks. Website content that constitutes marketing communications or investment recommendations falls within scope.
What Must Be Archived
A financial institution’s website is not a single static page. It is a complex, dynamic digital property that may include hundreds or thousands of pages, each containing content that could be subject to regulatory scrutiny.
Product and service descriptions. Pages describing investment products, fund offerings, banking services, or insurance policies must be archived. Regulators may review these pages to ensure claims are accurate, balanced, and not misleading.
Performance data and returns. Any presentation of investment performance, historical returns, or yield data on a website is subject to strict regulatory standards. Archived copies provide evidence that performance presentations complied with applicable rules at the time of publication.
Disclaimers and disclosures. Regulatory disclosures, risk warnings, and legal disclaimers must be preserved in context – meaning alongside the content they relate to. A disclaimer that has been removed or modified cannot be retroactively verified without a proper archive.
Promotional content and advertising. Marketing campaigns, special offers, rate promotions, and any content designed to attract clients or investors constitute regulated communications. These change frequently and must be captured at regular intervals.
Terms and conditions. Account agreements, fee schedules, privacy policies, and other binding terms published on a website are contractual documents. Disputes over what terms were in effect at a specific time require archived evidence.
Blog posts and thought leadership. Content published by analysts, portfolio managers, or advisers on a firm’s website may constitute investment recommendations or financial promotions, making them subject to the same recordkeeping requirements as formal marketing materials.
The Cost of Non-Compliance
Regulators have demonstrated a willingness to impose substantial penalties for failures in recordkeeping and communications compliance.
In September 2022, the SEC imposed a combined USD 1.8 billion in penalties on sixteen financial firms for failures related to recordkeeping of business communications. While those actions focused primarily on off-channel messaging, they signalled a clear regulatory intent: recordkeeping obligations are taken seriously, and violations carry severe consequences.
FINRA regularly publishes enforcement actions related to advertising and communications failures. Firms have been fined for misleading website content, inadequate disclosures on product pages, and failure to maintain records of promotional materials. In many cases, the inability to produce historical versions of website content – to demonstrate what was displayed and when – was itself a factor in the adverse outcome.
Beyond direct fines, non-compliance exposes financial institutions to litigation risk. In investor disputes and class action lawsuits, plaintiffs’ attorneys routinely seek historical versions of a firm’s website to demonstrate what representations were made at the time of the alleged harm. Without a proper archive, the firm cannot produce this evidence – and the absence of evidence often works against the defendant.
Why Screenshots and Manual Methods Fail
Many financial institutions still rely on ad hoc methods to preserve their website content: periodic screenshots, PDF exports, or manual saves of individual pages. These approaches are fundamentally inadequate for regulatory purposes.
Screenshots lack metadata. A screenshot captures a visual image but does not preserve the underlying HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or server response data. It provides no verifiable timestamp, no chain of custody, and no way to confirm that the image accurately represents what was displayed. Regulators and courts increasingly question the authenticity of screenshots as evidence.
Manual captures are incomplete. A financial institution’s website may contain thousands of pages, including dynamically generated content that changes based on user location, device type, or session state. Manual methods cannot capture the full scope of a website, leading to significant gaps in the archival record.
Point-in-time captures miss changes. Websites are updated continuously. A quarterly screenshot captures a single moment, missing all changes between captures. A product page that contained a misleading claim for two weeks before being corrected will not appear in a quarterly snapshot unless the timing happens to align.
No cryptographic verification. Manual captures provide no mechanism to prove that the preserved content has not been altered after the fact. In regulatory examinations and litigation, the integrity of evidence is paramount. Without cryptographic verification, the evidentiary value of any capture is diminished.
How Automated Website Archiving Solves the Problem
Enterprise-grade website archiving technology addresses every limitation of manual methods by automating the capture, preservation, and verification of financial institution websites.
Scheduled, comprehensive crawls. Automated archiving systems crawl the entire website at defined intervals – daily, weekly, or even more frequently for high-change environments. Every page, every document, every interactive element is captured systematically.
Full-fidelity capture. Modern web archiving technology renders JavaScript, captures dynamic content, preserves responsive layouts, and records the complete HTTP transaction for every resource. The archived version faithfully represents what a visitor to the website would have seen at the time of capture.
ISO 28500 WARC format. Archives stored in the ISO 28500 Web ARChive format preserve the complete technical context of each capture, including request and response headers, timestamps, and content bodies. WARC is the internationally recognised standard for web archiving, ensuring long-term accessibility and interoperability.
Cryptographic verification. At Aleph Archives, every capture is secured with dual cryptographic signatures using SHA-512 and RIPEMD-160 hashing algorithms. This dual-signature approach provides tamper-evident verification – any modification to the archived data, even a single byte, is immediately detectable. This level of integrity is essential for regulatory examinations and legal proceedings.
WORM storage. Archives are stored on Write Once, Read Many (WORM) storage, which prevents modification or deletion of archived content. This satisfies the immutability requirements specified in SEC Rule 17a-4 and equivalent regulations.
Replay and retrieval. Archived websites can be replayed interactively in a browser, allowing compliance officers, regulators, and legal teams to see exactly what appeared on the website at any given date. This is fundamentally different from viewing a flat screenshot – it preserves the complete user experience.
Building a Compliant Website Archiving Programme
For financial institutions looking to implement or improve their website archiving practices, several key considerations should guide the programme design.
Define capture frequency based on risk. High-change areas such as product pages, promotional content, and performance data may warrant daily or even intraday captures. More static content such as corporate governance pages may require less frequent archiving.
Ensure full-site coverage. The archiving programme should capture the entire website, including subdomains, microsites, campaign landing pages, and any other web properties under the institution’s control. Selective archiving creates compliance gaps.
Establish retention policies. Regulatory requirements vary by jurisdiction and content type. SEC Rule 17a-4 specifies retention periods of three to six years depending on the record type. FCA rules require a minimum of three years. The archiving programme should be configured to meet the longest applicable retention period.
Integrate with compliance workflows. Archived website content should be accessible to compliance officers for supervisory review and to legal teams for eDiscovery. Integration with existing compliance management systems streamlines regulatory examinations.
Document the programme. Regulators expect firms to have written supervisory procedures that describe how website content is captured, preserved, and made available for review. The archiving programme should be formally documented and included in the firm’s compliance manual.
Conclusion
Website archiving is not optional for financial services organisations. The regulatory requirements are clear, the penalties for non-compliance are severe, and the litigation risks of inadequate recordkeeping are substantial.
Automated website archiving – using ISO 28500-compliant WARC format, cryptographic verification, and WORM storage – provides the comprehensive, defensible preservation that regulators expect and that courts demand. For financial institutions that take their compliance obligations seriously, implementing an enterprise-grade website archiving programme is not a question of if, but when.
Aleph Archives has been providing website archiving solutions to regulated financial institutions since 2010. Our clients include global banks, asset managers, and broker-dealers who depend on our technology to meet their regulatory obligations. Contact us to learn how we can help your institution build a compliant website archiving programme.
