Controlling the Messaging
Welcome to FundFire’s News Brief, a roundup of a few top stories from the past week.
Asset managers are grappling with how to police employee use of messaging services on personal devices through unauthorized applications amid a crackdown by the Securities and Exchange Commission on unmonitored communications.
Firms are conducting regular audits of off-channel communications weighing the business rationale for which messaging applications they allow, compliance consultants say.
But when it comes to keeping track of employees’ use of personal devices, firms have had to balance the need to monitor business communications with privacy concerns alongside laws in jurisdictions like California and the European Union.
“[F]irms need to work with their legal counsel on finding that right balance,” said Krista Zipfel, director of regulatory compliance at ACA Group. “If there's good controls in place – the policies, the training, the certifications, the surveillance – a lot of times that should go far enough,” she said. “[F]irms shouldn't feel the need to then actually look at the personal devices themselves.”
Table of the Week Distribution teams are prioritizing data analytics to guide their sales and marketing efforts, but are running into obstacles applying these techniques in the institutional channel.
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Founder & Managing Partner at FinTech Law Firm specializing in technology and financial services.
1 年I'd love to know what the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission expects asset managers to do with off-channel communications. Historically, firms have had #policies, #training, and #certifications in place prevent such communications. But the staff suggests this isn't enough, and that firms should be "#testing" #compliance. How do you test whether an employee is lying in a certification or what they're doing outside of normal business channels. Asking employees to turnover personal devices for inspection seems excessive, and I'm not aware of any effective "employee" surveillance apps. Plus, what's to stop them from simply using another device? Has anyone found an effective way to mentor such activity? #securitieslaw #regulation #communications