LONDON, April 17 Reuters Global financial companies are falling behind on the monitoring and archiving of all businessrelated communications using personal messaging apps, a survey released on Wednesday showed, potentially running the risk of regulatory breaches and fines.

THE DETAILS

The Annual Compliance Health Check by data compliance firm SteelEye found 63 of some 400 compliance executives in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific said they were not monitoring staff usage of WhatsApp for compliance purposes.

Just 27 said they were investing in communications surveillance capabilities. More than a third said turbulent geopolitics and higherforlonger interest rates had led to the scrapping of technology projects to support compliance.

CONTEXT

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission SEC kicked off a sectorwide crackdown on businessrelated text messages over personal messaging platforms in the wake of the COVID19 pandemic, amid concerns texts were going unrecorded.

Some of the world39;s largest banks including JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup have been fined hundreds of millions of dollars after admitting compliance failures in this respect.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT

Total financial penalties linked to recordkeeping missteps across personal messaging tools exceeds 2 billion, SteelEye said.

While U.S. regulators have led the charge against firms failing to meet tough rules on recordkeeping, SteelEye said other global watchdogs were applying a…