Case Study: Essex National Securities achieves smarter archiving, streamlined compliance and $80K annual savings with Smarsh

Essex National Securities Selects Smarsh for Smarter Archiving

Essex National Securities (ENSI) is an independent broker‑dealer that provides turnkey investment and back‑office services to small and mid‑sized banks and must meet FINRA requirements for retaining and supervising electronic communications. ENSI struggled with an antiquated archiving vendor—costly licensing, poor customer service, a difficult interface, and high volumes of false‑positive flags—while managing email across multiple platforms and 27 domains across geographically distributed branches.

ENSI migrated to Smarsh, which handled complex multi‑domain installation and branch support, provided a centralized archiving platform with role‑based reviewer profiles, proactive capture alerts, and an automated policy engine to filter context‑aware keywords and apply custom tags. The result was faster, more accurate supervision, reduced reviewer workload, freed IT resources, and tangible savings (about $80,000 per year) alongside improved reporting and compliance oversight.

Essex National Securities

Garth Howard

Chief Information Officer