Analysts have urged financial services companies to consider the special merits of managed data archiving services as a means of meeting their escalating compliance obligations.

In a report by Aberdeen Group on Archiving Practices in Financial Services, one conclusion is that a hosted platform offers cash-strapped financial services companies a way to become more fiscally responsible at a time when it is severely needed.

There are any number of compliance issues that have a knock-on affect on data archiving and retrieval procedures in the financial services sectors, and these are in an almost constant state of amendment. Aberdeen notes the changes to the Federal Rules for Civil Procedures in 2006, and to SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority rules as examples.

Other aspects such as the challenges of e-discovery and litigation readiness also factor as reasons why companies need tighten the processes they use for archiving and retrieval.

Use of hosted or managed services has the benefit of driving consistency in archiving policies, and most importantly helps increase operational efficiency, the industry analyst group maintains.

The research indicates that there is a unique set of business pressures driving companies in the financial services industry to adopt data archiving technology, and in the current economic climate, an appropriate hosted service can provide remedy for these issues, Aberdeen said.

“Companies should use these challenging times as an opportunity to look into technology solutions that can help them produce and achieve more with less,” Jeffrey Hill of Aberdeen noted in a statement issued by Smarsh Inc, one of several niche vendors working the market segment.

“This is a sophisticated industry, and current environment aside, archiving needs are evolving,” said Stephen Marsh, founder and CEO of Smarsh.

Other suppliers active in the arena include ClearPace, Iron Mountain, Smarsh, Sungard and Teradata. Smarsh specialises in managed and custom email hosting and messaging compliance services to financial services firms.