Swingeing penalties levied by the US SEC and the CFTC on financial firms for failures to maintain and preserve written communications made through unofficial channels should be a wake-up call for firms across the globe. The SEC is now undertaking a raft of additional investigations into record preservation practices at financial services firms, and other global regulators, including the UK FCA, are also taking an interest.
Even before lockdown blurred the lines between home and work, many global regulators had been raising concerns about employees' increasing use of different forms of mobile messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Signal and Slack, providing convenient, free, more immediate channels to communicate with colleagues, clients and business partners.
The tide of change in communication preferences is unlikely to be held back. Our briefing looks at why the regulators care, and what firms can do to manage the risks and take all reasonable steps to preserve data where channels have been used outside policy.
Please see our full briefing here.
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