Personally addressed
Email is naturally sent to an identified recipient.
Email & Durable Medium
Keep the email. Give important documents somewhere better to live.
Email can be a Durable Medium. The case for Documentd is not that email fails the regulatory test. It is that an inbox is a poor long-term home for documents customers may need again months or years later.
Keep your existing communication. Add Documentd as the document-delivery layer for the records customers need to keep.
No email replacement. No new communication platform for your teams to learn.
Start with the regulatory position
Email can be a Durable Medium
The FCA expressly recognises that email can satisfy the Durable Medium characteristics. It can be personally addressed, stored for future reference and reproduced unchanged.
Capable of being stored
The recipient can retain the message and return to it later.
Capable of unchanged reproduction
A received message or attached document can normally be reproduced later in the form originally supplied.
So we do not need to make the argument that email is somehow non-compliant.
The better question is whether the customer's inbox should also be responsible for their long-term document history.
Read the FCA guidanceTwo different jobs
Email is excellent for communication. It is not organised around important records.
Email is built around messages, threads and conversations. Important customer documents have a different lifecycle: they may need to remain findable long after the conversation around them has disappeared from view.
Email
Communicate
Tell the customer something has happened, explain what a document means, send reminders and keep the conversation moving.
- Familiar to customers and staff
- Immediate and convenient
- Already connected to business workflows
- Ideal for messages and notifications
+
Documentd
Deliver the document to keep
Give important point-in-time documents their own persistent, customer-focused location.
- Important records separated from everyday messages
- Documents organised around the customer
- Historic information remains easy to retrieve
- The email can still provide context and notification
The email tells the customer that the document has arrived. Keepd gives that document somewhere to live.
The long-term inbox problem
The cost appears later, when the customer needs the document again
Sending an attachment is cheap. Finding it again may not be. The long-term cost of an email-only model is often hidden inside customer service, operations and repeated document handling.
Important and ordinary messages are mixed together
A policy document can sit beside meeting confirmations, marketing messages, receipts and thousands of everyday emails.
The customer has to remember how to find it
Retrieval depends on remembering the sender, subject line, date, attachment name or search terms months or years later.
Attachments become separate copies
Files may be downloaded onto different devices, renamed, duplicated or detached from the context in which they were supplied.
Failure to find becomes a service request
When the customer cannot locate a document, the problem comes back to your support or operations team as a resend or retrieval query.
What this sounds like in practice
“Can you resend last year's statement?”
“Which email contained my policy documents?”
“I can't find the agreement you sent me.”
The business case
Even a small amount of document-related support becomes meaningful at scale
Email delivery itself may cost almost nothing. But every customer who cannot find a document creates work somewhere else.
Attachment sent
The document disappears into the customer's normal inbox.
Customer cannot find it later
The original delivery succeeded, but retrieval fails months later.
Customer contacts you
A self-service document becomes an operations or support interaction.
Document is found and sent again
Staff search internal systems, verify the request and resend the file.
The opportunity is simple:
turn more of those future retrieval requests back into customer
self-service.
Keep the existing workflow
Documentd can sit alongside the email you already send
This does not have to become an email-replacement project. Your existing email can remain the communication channel while Documentd handles the important document separately.
The customer receives the communication in the familiar channel.
The important document is placed into the customer's Keepd space.
Keep email for communication. Use Documentd for the documents customers need to keep.
What actually changes?
Very little for the sender. Much more for the customer.
The aim is not to ask staff to adopt an entirely new communication process. It is to add a better destination for important documents.
Email only
The inbox becomes the archive
- Email communication stays familiar
- Delivery is immediate
- – Important documents mix with everyday messages
- – Customer manages attachment filing themselves
- – Retrieval problems return as resend requests
Email + Documentd
Communication and document history are separated
- Email communication stays familiar
- Existing workflows can remain in place
- Important documents have a dedicated location
- Customers can retrieve historical records themselves
- The business is less dependent on resend support
Customer outcomes
Durable Medium is only part of the reason to improve document delivery
A communication method can satisfy a Durable Medium requirement without automatically creating the best customer experience.
For important documents, customers also benefit from being able to find information again, review it when they need it and retrieve their own historical records without contacting the provider.
The customer outcome improves when the document remains useful after the day it was delivered.
Read: Is Email a Durable Medium?Use it selectively
Not every email needs Documentd
Everyday messages can stay exactly where they are. The value is greatest for documents that form part of the customer's important record and may need to be found again later.
Good candidates for Documentd
Documents worth keeping
Statements and reports Policy documents Agreements and contracts Terms and conditions Regulatory notices Tax documents Confirmations Other important customer records
A meeting confirmation or everyday service message probably belongs only in email. A statement, agreement or policy document may deserve a permanent customer-facing copy.
No rip-and-replace project
Add better document delivery in three steps
Start with the workflows you already have and introduce Documentd only where it creates value.
Keep sending email
Your teams can continue using the communication process they already know.
Choose which documents deserve a permanent home
Use Documentd selectively for important point-in-time records rather than every ordinary message.
Add Documentd to the workflow
Send from the web, copy Documentd into existing email, use #deliver, or integrate through the API.
You can start by sending manually, copy Documentd into existing emails, use #deliver, or integrate through the API as volumes grow.
Try Documentd freeA better long-term email model
Keep the conversation in email. Give the document a permanent home.
Documentd works alongside the communication channels your business already uses, giving customers an organised place for the important documents they may need again.
About regulatory requirements
Email can constitute a Durable Medium where the relevant conditions are satisfied. Whether a particular communication satisfies an applicable regulatory requirement depends on the rule, the information being provided and the way the delivery process is configured.
Documentd is designed around the characteristics identified in the FCA definition and guidance on Durable Medium. Firms remain responsible for determining which regulatory requirements apply to their own communications.
FCA Handbook definition of Durable Medium