US bank Morgan Stanley has sanctioned entity workers who carried out official procedures via WhatsApp and other messaging platforms, with fines ranging from a few thousand dollars to more than a million dollars per employee. The Financial Times.
Sanctions imposed will be based on a points system that takes into account factors such as the number of messages sent, the banker’s age and whether he received advance warning, people with knowledge of the situation told the newspaper. In this sense, depending on the size of the corresponding sanction, the funds would be withdrawn from the previous premiums or deducted from the future payments.
In September last year, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined a dozen investment firms in the United States a combined penalty of $1,100 million (€1,009 million) for failing to keep records of internal communications, according to a statement.
SEC sanctions Barclays, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS with $125 million (€115 million) . Similarly, it fined Jefferies and Nomura 50 million (€46 million) and the firm Cantor Fitzgerald & Co paid 10 million (9.2 million euros).
From January 2019 to September 2021, employees at these firms communicated about business matters using messaging apps on their personal devices. Accordingly, the companies did not record these conversations in violation of the applicable legislation.
Morgan Stanley now offers its employees training sessions explaining situations in which they should move conversations from personal devices to official channels, such as work email. This can include seemingly innocuous instances where colleagues exchange messages about the time or location of a meeting.
The group has warned its employees that these seemingly trivial messages often lead to more important discussions, said one person familiar with the bank’s training programs. Financial Times.
Source: El Diario
