You must develop and maintain appropriate records to support investment analysis, recommendations, actions, and other investment-related communications with clients and prospective clients.

You should maintain files to support investment recommendations. In addition to furnishing excellent reference materials for future work, research files play a key role in justifying investment decisions under later scrutiny. Files can serve as the ultimate proof that recommendations and actions, good or bad, were made based on the same methodology that drove the analyst's decisions.

• Records can be maintained either in hardcopy or electronic form (soft copy).
• CFA Institute recommends maintaining records for at least seven years.
• Records are the property of the member's or candidate's firm.

Example

If an analyst writes investment recommendations based on many sources, such as stock exchange data, interviews with senior management, onsite company visits, and other third party research, he or she should document and keep copies of all the information that goes into recommendations.