Proactive Investors - NatWest Group PLC (LSE:LON:NWG) has told staff they are no longer allowed to discuss work topics on social media forums with only “approved channels” to be used in future.
WhatsApp, Facebook (NASDAQ:META) Messenger and Skype are all on the banned list for corporate devices with the bank ramping up its action from requests to stop using them into an order.
A spokesman for NatWest told PA: “Like many organisations, we only permit the use of approved channels for communicating about business matters, whether internally or externally.”
The key difference with approved channels is that all messages can be retrieved, unlike channels such as Skype.
US banks have been heavily fined for their employees using untraceable messaging with JP Morgan paying US$125 million after admitting its employees used text and WhatsApp.
UK banks have not yet faced enforcement action but Harvey Knight, a partner in the UK financial services regulatory team at law firm Withers said it is just a matter of time before the UK regulator issues fines for messages that can’t be retrieved.
“It is no surprise that a leading UK bank such as NatWest is taking pre-emptive action to stop such potential business record-keeping issues being made their liability by their UK regulators,” he told PA.