Banks kept hanging on WhatsApp record-keeping probe – IFR

Banks and other financial institutions are still waiting to see if UK and European regulators will follow the lead of their US counterparts and apply fines for failing to properly monitor and record staff electronic communications.The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have between them levied more than US$2.5bn in fines over the past two years on 18 different firms, banks, fund managers and intermediaries, but the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has yet to take action.The fines have largely related to record-keeping failures for chat apps, such as WhatsApp, Signal or simple texts. Such apps tend to be used on employees’ personal devices, making it harder to monitor their use.Major Wall Street banks – Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Credit Suisse – have each had to pay the SEC US$125m and varying amounts to the CFTC. Smaller players have also paid fines to both the SEC and CFTC too.Shortly after the first suite of fines in September 2022, the FCA was reported to be seeking information from several firms. And in October Sarah Pritchard, director of markets at the FCA, said the regulator remained
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