New York state's banking regulator has reached an agreement with Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Bank of New York Mellon on the record-keeping requirements of a new chat and messaging platform.
The banks are part of a 14-strong consortium funding Symphony Communication, a new platform set to launch Tuesday that plans to challenge Bloomberg's dominance as the default messaging medium for traders.
Over the summer, New York Department of Financial Services Acting Superintendent Anthony Albanese flagged concerns over Symphony's data retention policies, noting that the firm's own marketing material boasts of "Guaranteed Data Deletion" and that "data is 100% protected by encryption keys".
The NYDFS now says that it has struck a deal with the four banks it regulates which will see Symphony retain for seven years a copy of all e-communications sent through its platforms to or from them. In addition the four will store duplicate copies of the decryption keys for their messages with independent custodians.
Says Albanese: "We are pleased that these banks did the right thing by working cooperatively with us to help address our concerns about this new messaging platform. 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.”