US authorities fined leading banks $ 1.8 billion for deleting correspondence with customers

The American authorities immediately punished 11 leading financial companies in the United States and several other countries for improper handling of data on business contacts with customers. The total fine amounted to $1.8 billion.

For example, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined eight banks and three brokerage companies for a total of more than $1.1 billion. Among them were American Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, British Barclays, German Deutsche Bank, Swiss Credit Suisse and UBS, which will pay $125 Brokerage firms Jefferies and Nomura will each pay $50 million, while Cantor Fitzgerald will pay $10 million to the SEC.

In addition, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined the same companies for a total of $710 million. Bank of America will pay the largest fine – $100 million. All other banks will pay $75 million each. Nomura was fined $50 million, Jefferies – $30 million and Cantor Fitzgerald was fined $6 million.

As it was established during the investigation, banks and brokerage firms allowed their employees to conduct business correspondence with clients not through corporate communication channels, but in instant messengers installed on employees’ personal mobile devices. US law requires financial institutions to keep all customer communications. Companies fined by the SEC and CFTC did not track the correspondence of their employees with clients on personal devices, and they often simply deleted it over time.

Kirill Sarkhanyants