Can a Customer Portal Be a Durable Medium?

Yes, a customer portal can be a durable medium

The FCA’s position is more nuanced than saying that websites are or are not durable media.

Its durable-medium guidance says the criteria can be met by an interactive secure website.

For that website to constitute a durable medium, the FCA says the information must:

• be addressed personally to the customer
• remain accessible in future through the secure login
• allow unchanged reproduction of information from previous periods

So an appropriately designed customer portal can qualify.

The practical issue is what follows from relying on the portal for that job.

A portal has to preserve the past, not only show the present

Most customer portals are primarily live service environments.

They are useful for things such as:

• current account information
• transactions
• messages and tasks
• live valuations
• servicing requests
• profile management
• interactive reporting

Those are dynamic functions.

Durable-medium information has a different characteristic: the customer may need to return to exactly what was provided at an earlier point in time.

That means a portal being used as a durable medium needs to distinguish between:

• information that changes as the account changes
• settled information previously supplied to the customer

The FCA uses online banking statements as an example. It is not enough merely to show the current position. Previous information must remain capable of being reproduced unchanged.

What does that mean in practice?

If a firm relies on its customer portal as the durable medium, it should consider questions such as:

How are historic versions preserved?

If terms, disclosures or documents change, can the customer still retrieve the version originally supplied to them?

How long does access continue?

The FCA definition requires access for a period adequate for the purposes of the information.

Different documents may therefore create different retention and accessibility considerations.

What happens when the customer leaves?

A live portal is often designed around an active commercial relationship.

But the customer may still need statements, agreements, notices or tax records after the account is closed.

If portal access ends with the relationship, the firm needs to consider how required information remains available.

What happens when the portal is replaced?

Portal technology changes.

Platforms are redesigned, migrated or retired.

If the portal is also the customer’s long-term document record, historic information and unchanged reproduction have to survive those changes.

Who can alter or delete settled information?

A system used for live customer servicing may allow staff or automated processes to update information.

The durable-medium implementation needs to preserve the information that was actually provided.

Does a portal have to be a durable medium?

Not always.

Some FCA rules distinguish between information provided:

• in a durable medium, and
• through a website that does not itself constitute a durable medium, where separate website conditions are satisfied

For example, parts of the FCA Handbook expressly allow information to be provided in a durable medium or through a website that meets the applicable website conditions.

The regulatory analysis therefore starts with the specific rule.

A firm should not assume that every customer webpage must become a permanent archive simply because regulated information appears somewhere within the portal.

Choosing where customers keep their records

A firm can provide document access through a suitably designed portal or through a separate customer filing service. The decision should include how customers retrieve past records, who controls their copies and what happens when the relationship ends.

An online filing cabinet offers a simpler alternative for businesses whose requirement is making issued documents available. Even where a portal exists, giving customers their own filed copies can make long-term access less dependent on that operational system.

The account-closure problem

This distinction becomes particularly clear when a customer leaves.

The business may quite reasonably want to close access to the operational account.

But the customer may still need historic documents.

Keeping the full servicing portal alive simply so a former customer can retrieve old documents can create unnecessary authentication, support, security and migration obligations.

Filing customers’ own copies as documents are issued allows the active relationship to end while those records remain accessible.

See how customers can keep important documents after an account closes.

Where Documentd fits

Documentd provides branded online filing cabinets and automatically files customers’ copies. Their account is under their control, and their copies remain available independently of the sender’s systems.

The settled-copy protections described for Documentd apply to documents filed through its sending methods. They should not be assumed to apply to files uploaded directly in Keepd. A branded cabinet or a product name alone does not establish that a particular communication meets every applicable rule.

Start with web send. Once your company is set up, copy-in adds filing to ordinary email and attachments; those email copies still go to the recipient. Email integration and the API support other workflows.

See Documentd’s durable-medium approach and the available filing methods.

The key point

A customer portal can be a durable medium.

The real question for many firms is not can we make the portal do it?

It is:

Do we want the live customer portal to carry the long-term responsibility for historic document access, unchanged reproduction and former-customer retrieval?