Four major banks have agreed to enhanced record-keeping protocols with the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) when using the new Symphony Communications chat and messaging platform.
Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and BNY Mellon all responded to concerns raised by NYDFS in July that Symphony’s ‘guaranteed data deletion’ feature could hinder regulatory investigations on Wall Street.
The agreement stipulates that Symphony, which was created through a consortium of 14 major banks and financial institutions, will retain an encrypted copy of all e-communications sent through its platforms to or from the four banks for seven years.
In addition, all four banks will store duplicate copies of the decryption keys for their messages with independent custodians.
Anthony Albanese, acting superintendent of financial services at NYDFS, said: “This is a critical issue since chats and other electronic records have provided key evidence in investigations of wrongdoing on Wall Street. It is vital that regulators act to ensure that these records do not fall into a digital black hole.”
NYDFS has declared that the data-retention protocols should be adopted by the remaining regulated financial institutions using Symphony.
