When bankers communicate via Whatsapp, it can get really expensive for their employers.

In September, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined 16 banks a total of $1.1 billion for talking about such chat channels because such chats cannot be adequately documented and archived.

Tim Kanning

Editor in Business.

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The maximum fine of 125 million dollars was imposed eight times, including for Deutsche Bank with its subsidiary DWS and its American competitor Morgan Stanley.

The latter is now recovering part of this money from its employees.

The bank has imposed fines of more than one million dollars on bankers who were too lax in their communication with their customers or colleagues, as the "Financial Times" now reported.

In return, the bank either reclaimed parts of previously granted bonus payments (clawback) or retained the money from future bonus payments.

Points system determines amount of penalty

The amount of the penalty is calculated according to a points system and depends, among other things, on how many messages have been sent, whether there have been warnings beforehand and how long the employee has been working in the company.

They range from a few thousand to over a million dollars.

A spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank did not want to say when asked by the FAZ whether there were similar penalties there.

She merely referred to a "consequence management" that the bank had already introduced with regard to the use of unauthorized communication channels.

"In connection with the most recent developments on this topic, Deutsche Bank has further strengthened its processes and controls, which also resulted in a further tightening of our corresponding consequence management."

Board members waive part of their bonuses

Depending on the scope and severity of a violation, this affects the individual performance evaluation and the individual compensation.

Repeated violations could also result in suspension of a promotion, for example, or disciplinary action ranging from warning to dismissal.

The bank had already announced in September that all board members wanted to forgo the EUR 75,000 bonus “due to cultural misconduct by employees”.

The other banks that were fined by the SEC at the time included the Swiss institutes UBS and Credit Suisse, as well as Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America.