The software was free, but the bill may be salty.
In recent days, the parade of quarterly results of major US banks revealed that several of them had each put the sum of 200 million dollars in reserve.
The reason: the use of WhatsApp private messaging, which does not meet transparency requirements.
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Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America anticipate a sanction which could be imposed on them by the SEC, the American policeman of the financial markets.
The latter has indeed announced that it will carry out several checks on the subject since last April, and has already imposed on the sector leader, JPMorgan, a fine of 200 million dollars for the same reasons.
In total, the behemoths would have to pay $1 billion in compliance.
The use of WhatsApp, which allows the automatic deletion of messages, hampers effective control by the SEC.
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“As technology evolves, it is important for registrants to ensure that their communications are appropriately recorded and not made outside of official channels to avoid market surveillance
,” Gary said. Gensler, Chairman of the SEC.
Banks will now have to monitor the use of this software by their employees themselves, as Deutsche Bank has already begun to do.
This will require the implementation of IT tools, which are themselves expensive.
