Big news was just released in Fortune reporting, “Regulators are poised to extract about $1 billion in fines from the five biggest US investment banks for failing to monitor employees using unauthorized messaging apps.” The article goes on to state that one bank is being called to pay $200 million, a bar that was set with the J.P. Morgan Chase case earlier this year that was also related to business being conducted on unapproved channels. With precedent set, banks can expect regulators to be watching this very closely and they must prepare.
Conducting business on unapproved communications channels is a problem that is set to continue growing with ongoing remote work and new ways to communicate digitally seemingly hitting the market daily. Banks and other regulated institutions must be able to manage this challenge and continually show proof of best efforts. The best way to ensure compliance with communications policies is to train employees on where they can communicate and what the consequences are for working outside of those bounds. And the best kind of training happens in-the-moment while employees type to create a pause in their behavior before they send a non-compliant communication. Risk mitigation is the key and empowering employees is how to unlock success.
We work with a number of clients in the financial space and we help them see which channels their employees are using before messages are sent. These analytics are gathered through the use of our proactive training solution and compliance leaders who use Fairwords see dashboards updated weekly to understand where employees are communicating and what terms could be putting their firms at risk. Read the full case study about how one of our financial services clients is benefitting from Fairwords showing them the channels that are used in their organization.

Example of Fairwords analytics that show which applications are being flagged the most for potentially problematic communications. This allows compliance and HR leaders to identify which channels are being used in the company and if they’re using any that are non-compliant. This data is provided anonymously to support additional organization-wide training.
Fairwords is here to help. Identify the communications channels being used in your organization by getting in touch now.