* I’m barely using hyperbole
The offense here is that no effort was done to keep records of the communication. It would have been ok to use WhatsApp if they somehow would have archived all communications. Records of communications have to be kept so that auditors can verify that no inside trading secrets were communicated to others, for instance.
This absolutely happens. Usually, however, the regulators are interpreting the law in a way that the legislators agree with. In those cases, there is no need for new legislation.
One, not every securities professional trades at a bank. Two, this is not true for any of them. Broadly speaking, work-related written communications must be logged. But there is nuance and exception to that.
any change to any banking system is then done via a banking order (payment order, deposit order, etc) and is documented and signed.
so there is plenty of trail evidence for each transaction with each customer
Employees are reminded not to use these lines for personal reasons (imagine an employee using the phone line to discuss their health with their doctor, and the employer just recorded extremely sensitive information from an employee), but the alternative means a strong fine from the regulators (usually the local AML authority).
People will just get a second private device that is not managed by the organization, and if there is a mutually beneficial advantage to doing so, the other party will do the same as well.
This has been going on forever, I remember when they kicked up a huge fuss when they found out that people were doing direct pin-to-pin messages on the blackberry (was not logged for boss to read at the time).
If it were totally allowed and widespread how would there be any pretence of fairness in the markets? Of course you could say that at least then people would be appreciating the reality of the situation . . .
There is no "intent" here. What you are describing is an organized criminal conspiracy which is illegal no matter what device or system you're using. What I am talking about here is whether the employer should get to listen in to all your calls and read all your emails and text messages. Why do you think they like BYOD so much? Because they can get a window into your personal life, what apps you have installed, etc.
It is not illegal to have friends, but if you are in a job that has certain regulations it is illegal to communicate in a non approved way with business partners. This isn’t a wide scope - it’s people who have jobs that are covered by these regulations.
It's not an overall waste of time, because the goal is to reduce the enormous wastes caused by fraud, crime, and other malfeasance.
I know somebody who worked at a bank. The bank had a mandatory vacation policy: you had to be 100% gone for at least two solid weeks every year. When outsiders heard about this, they were often indignant. Who is the company to tell me how I spend my vacation? I know best when I need to rest. Why are they trying to regulate and control so much?
But the policy was about preventing crime. There are kinds of fraud where one person can keep it going a long time if they're around to fiddle things manually. But a couple of weeks of absence, plus the cross-training that goes with it, can keep those kinds of frauds from ever happening. And when they do happen, they stay much smaller.
As an example of why fighting fraud is vital to a bank, you could look at the failure of Barings Bank. One guy was able to fiddle the accounts to hide his losses, gaining a reputation as a trading genius. He started with a little deception, and it spiraled out of control over the years, eventually destroying a bank that had survived more than two centuries.
When compared with the destruction of the bank, making sure that supervisors can see what an employee is getting up to is a pretty small waste in comparison.
But they can't see this according to the comment to which you're responding; that's the problem.
Take the pharmaceutical industry in the US. One reason it's so expensive for them to operate is the massive amount of rules and regulations that surround their work and cause them to hire tons more highly skilled personnel in order to meet those regulations just to get work done.
Now all those rules exist because someone did something bad and the rules prevent those bad things from happening again, which is a good thing. However, it increases the cost of doing business, and over time, as these rules and regulations pile up, everything gets more and more expensive and complex.
It's unfortunate that we as a society now have to pay for the actions of a bad actor in perpetuity. I don't know of a good alternative, because again these rules exist for a reason. Fraud is obviously bad, and people will constantly take advantage of the system until we regulate it more and more, but then normal rule followers pay the price.
in "free market" conditions, there should be players who can compete by not increasing prices, but due to the increasing number of regulations, it becomes impossible for smaller players to enter the market or exist in the market, so nobody can come in and take advantage of lowering prices, so prices just go up and up
Again these regulations usually exist for good reason, it just makes the market less efficient and drives prices up over time
In a free market without regulation, the "rational" thing to do is to flood the market with fake "life saving drugs" and reap the (almost) infinite ROI.
In a less hyperbolic sense, the nature of "market" dictates we cut corners wherever possible. When it's a matter of life and death, the public chose to legislate which corners cannot be cut.
But to answer your direct question, I think the answer is a pretty clear no. Financial companies invest a ton in communications. If there's a buck to be made from improving their tools so that their employees can communicate faster, they'll get around to it eventually. They'll just do it with tools that provide the sort of proper records that they've been obliged to keep since forever.
And the safety is probably correct. It's a problem that I'm not sure how to address
Two, you're ignoring the externalities here. Most regulations exist to account for negative externalities. If I sell big cookies on the street for $5 each and 1 person in 10 dies from eating my cookies, then my $50 in revenue has to be compared against the cost of the death. Food safety regulations have costs to be sure, but we have to measure them against the harm averted.
If a product is more expensive because its makers have to be more careful, then that's not inefficient. It's people having to pay the true costs of the product, which is more efficient overall.
It's also true that regulation can be inefficient, of course. But the solution for that is primarily for producers to be responsible members of society, and secondarily for them to work closely with regulators to find effective regulation at minimal cost.
But if effective regulation that properly places costs kills a company or an industry, I'd argue that industry should not exist in the first place. Something we're seeing rediscovered in real time with people like Sam Bankman-Fried.
They're the employer and get to set reasonable conditions for employment, that's who they are.
Then attempting to enforce antitrust laws is likewise a waste of time.