The NY regulator has reached out to Symphony, the Wall Street consortia led messaging platform, to find out how banks would ensure that messages created using the new platform would be retained, and “whether their use of Symphony’s encryption technology can be used to prevent review by compliance personnel or regulators”.
In a letter on Wednesday to David Gurle, the chief executive of Symphony Communication Services, the New York Department of Financial Services asked it to clarify how its tool would allow firms to erase their data trails, potentially falling foul of laws on record-keeping. The letter, which was signed by acting superintendent Anthony Albanese and shared with the press, noted that chatroom transcripts had formed a critical part of authorities’ investigations into the rigging of markets for foreign exchange and interbank loans. It called for Symphony to spell out its document retention capabilities, policies and features, citing two specific areas of interest as “data deletion” and “end-to-end encryption”.