Lifemark Securities Streamlines Communications Review with AI-Native Compliance Infrastructure

Moving past lexicon-based archiving

When Steve Smith joined Lifemark Securities as Director of Compliance in September 2023, he brought a philosophy rooted in business outcomes.

“Our registered representatives are central to the firm's client relationships and growth,” Smith says. “My role is to help support that work by maintaining a strong compliance framework that protects the firm, its clients, and its representatives.”

Lifemark's compliance program consistently met its regulatory obligations, but the technology supporting it had room to grow. “We had a lot of legacy software, and none of it spoke to each other,” Smith recalls.

Hadrius gives us an opportunity to do more training and development with our reps: ‘Here's how to say that in the future,’ or ‘Make sure you add this disclosure.’

Email review ran on a lexicon-based archiving system that generated a high volume of low-value alerts relative to the number that required action. Annual attestations were tracked using older, proprietary software built on a Microsoft Access database. “It was a highly manual process," he says. "We got it done, but it took a lot more effort than it should have.”

Tech with compliance expertise

Smith spent months evaluating compliance software vendors, scoring each against a spreadsheet of twelve categories. Vendors that missed requirements were eliminated; others didn't fit the firm's needs or budget.

One name kept resurfacing. When Smith posted on the National Society of Compliance Professionals forums asking what software people relied on, Hadrius came up repeatedly as a top recommendation.

The field narrowed to three all-in-one finalists. The deciding factor was the team behind the product.

“The biggest reassurance for me was the compliance background of the Hadrius founding team,” Smith explains. “You can tell compliance experience is built into the system from the get-go.”

Setup was collaborative. Lifemark used some of Hadrius’ pre-defined sub-rules, refined others, and incorporated WSPs developed with an outside consultant. Lifemark’s Director of Operations even implemented a custom sub-rule flagging recruiting emails sent to the firm’s reps.

When initial setup surfaced more alerts than expected, Smith worked with the Hadrius team to tune the rules and improve precision.

“The process has been very intuitive,” Smith says. “It's a very easy system to set up your own sub-rules and tailor them, whether or not you use AI to help refine the language.”

More efficient comms review

With communications review streamlined, the review workload that once occupied multiple supervisors is now handled more efficiently by Smith's team, with meaningfully reduced time spent on alerts that don't require escalation.

“The review process is far more efficient now,” Smith says. “The alerts we do act on are consistently ones that call for a closer look.”

With less time spent on low-value alerts, the team has more capacity to turn genuine flags into coaching moments.

“Hadrius gives us an opportunity to do more training and development with our reps: ‘Here's how to say that in the future,’ or ‘Make sure you add this disclosure.’”

More is coming. Marketing Review is rolling out soon, replacing ad hoc email approvals for materials like newsletters. Annual attestations will move off the legacy database entirely.

Consolidation has its own benefits. “I don't have to log into four or five different systems,” Smith says. “The dashboard shows my team at a glance what to focus on today. The more modules we turn on, the more value we get. It lets us run a more efficient, nimble team.”