WHATSAPP INC. BLOOMBERG ARCHIVE

How Wall Street banks are thinking about the WhatsApp problemĪ compliance executive who oversees markets and securities services at a top Wall Street bank said messaging apps have become more of a pressing issue in the past two or three years. 'They need to spend the money and just get it done.'īusiness Insider spoke with more than a dozen traders, compliance experts, tech providers, and other market participants to learn about a surge in WhatsApp use, how Wall Street firms are trying to stop it, and why traders keep getting caught in the fallout. 'Firms need to evolve their policies,' Danielle Tierney, a senior advisor at Greenwich Associates who has done extensive research on risk and compliance, told Business Insider in October. Meanwhile, a surge in messaging-app use during the pandemic has burnished the argument that tech tools to help monitor WhatsApp are a better solution than outright bans. Read more: 2 top Morgan Stanley commodities execs are out after the bank discovered the group was improperly using WhatsApp to communicate Wall Street has largely put in place outright WhatsApp bans that have resulted in the exits of some high-profile traders, including two top commodities traders at Morgan Stanley last month. John isn't subject to the same regulatory obligations as banks or brokerages, where firm policy often bans the use of WhatsApp and other encrypted-messaging apps like WeChat because business-related conversations with clients need to be able to be monitored and archived.īut things get tricky when market players operating under different sets of rules want to interact with each other. John, who communicates with Wall Street asset managers, brokers, suppliers, and logistics companies to get deals done. 'You can get on one of these apps, ping somebody, and have an answer in under a minute,' said St. But traditional lines of communication, such as email, generally lend themselves to less-immediate interactions. It might seem less efficient to manage messages across multiple platforms. All of these apps are free, they're fast, and the globe is smaller.' And then China, obviously, prefers WeChat. Shortly thereafter, I'm using Signal,' he told Business Insider in an interview. 'At 6 a.m., I'm using WhatsApp to communicate with Serbia. Then it sells commodities including gold and coffee to buyers around the world. John is the founder and CEO of Rain Unlimited Global, a boutique private-equity firm based in New York City that invests in natural-resources companies in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana.

John is a lesson in the appeal of messaging apps. The start of a typical workday for Raymond St. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

WHATSAPP INC. BLOOMBERG ARCHIVE

WhatsApp and encrypted apps like it don't archive communications, making them prohibited in the eyes of compliance departments, which try hard to but can't entirely deter their use.Last month, two top commodities-trading executives at Morgan Stanley left the firm after it was discovered they had used WhatsApp and failed to supervise others who were also using it.Business Insider spoke with more than a dozen insiders to learn about the surge in WhatsApp use, how firms are trying to stop it, and why traders keep getting caught in the fallout.

Financial institutions have waged a long battle in hopes of getting control of it. The use of communications tools like WhatsApp has haunted Wall Street for years.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.

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