Posts Tagged ‘messaging apps’
Another Take on Messaging Apps
For nearly three years now, the Securities and Exchange Commission has fired off one enforcement action after another at the financial services industry for employees’ improper use of messaging apps. Today let’s consider two contrarian voices that raise a fair question: exactly how are firms supposed to satisfy this nearly impossible compliance goal? Those contrarian…
Read MoreAnother Round of Messaging Fines
The crackdown on employees’ use of off-channel messaging apps continues! The Securities and Exchange Commission just announced settlements with a whopping 26 financial firms for messaging offenses, and those firms will collectively pay more than $390 million in civil penalties — although three firms that self-reported their offenses will pay much less. By now we…
Read MoreUS Bank Dinged on Messaging Fails
US Bank is the latest financial firm sanctioned for employees’ use of off-channel messaging apps, fined $6 million on Tuesday by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. At this point these cases are hardly news any more, but the US Bank enforcement does have a few twists that warrant a compliance officer’s attention. First, as outlined…
Read MoreA Curious SEC Break on Messaging Offenses
The Securities and Exchange Commission has fired off another volley of enforcement actions for employees’ improper use of messaging apps — but this time we have a new twist! The SEC has been quietly granting waivers to the offending firms to keep working on deals when normally their conduct would disqualify them from doing so.…
Read More‘Messaging Risk’ for Everyone Else
After my last post about financial services firms getting socked by regulators for employees’ use of improper messaging apps, a compliance officer in the manufacturing sector messaged me (improperly, of course) and declared, “The first time they sanction a non-financial company for this stuff, compliance officers will be panicking in the streets.” I agree with…
Read MoreMessaging Crackdown Continues
Securities regulators sanctioned another dozen Wall Street trading houses on Tuesday for employees’ usage of unauthorized messaging systems. They are the latest targets in an ongoing crackdown over the practice, and further proof that management teams need to take this issue seriously. The Securities and Exchange Commission sanctioned 11 firms, imposing a total of $289…
Read MoreA Messaging Violation in Detail
Amid all the consternation these days about employees’ improper use of messaging apps, how did we overlook this? An enforcement action from FINRA earlier this year over a financial firm’s mishandling of iMessages, which happens to offer a fascinating glimpse of the control failures that can happen here. The firm in question is Deloitte Corporate…
Read MoreMore Dreary News on Messaging Apps
A new survey of compliance officers finds most of them with grave doubts about their company’s ability to police against employees’ improper use of messaging apps, and are enacting bans mostly as gestures to demonstrate their effort at compliance obligations — but few believe such bans actually work. So says a report from Global Relay,…
Read MoreThe Messaging Crackdown Continues
In case any compliance professionals out there assume that the crackdown on employee use of improper messaging apps is over, the Securities and Exchange Commission sanctioned two more Wall Street trading firms late last week for the same offenses, and imposed the same punishments of monetary penalties and extensive compliance reviews. The broker-dealer firms in…
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