- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2024-09-05T14:32:00
Six credit rating agencies will pay $49 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for allowing their employees to communicate on company business using nonapproved communication channels like Whats App and WeChat.
The six firms are credit ratings agencies, representing a new category of firms entering into settlements with the SEC for off-channel communication violations that, until now, has mostly targeted broker-dealers and investment advisers.
According to an SEC press release, issued Tuesday, the latest firms to settle include Moody’s Investors Service, Inc. to pay $20 million; S&P Global Ratings to pay $20 million; Fitch Ratings, Inc. to pay $8 million; HR Ratings de México, S.A. de C.V. to pay $250,000; A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. to pay $1 million; and Demotech, Inc. to pay $100,000.
THIS IS MEMBERS-ONLY CONTENT. To continue reading, choose one of the options below.
News and analysis for the well-informed compliance or audit exec. Select an option and click continue.
Annual Membership limited time offer
Subscribe now for $365
Our lowest price ($1 per day) for one year.
Annual Membership $499
Full price one year membership.
Two regulators doled out more than $477 million in fines on a new group of broker-dealers, investment advisers, and swaps dealers that failed to maintain and preserve the electronic communications of their employees, bringing total such fines issued since 2021 to $3.2 billion.
Nearly three-quarters of compliance professionals at investment firms have made testing for off-channel and electronic communications surveillance a top priority in mock exams, according to a new poll, with more than half calling it the “hottest” topic of discussion.
Two senior officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission described how both agencies are committed to rooting out off-channel communications among registered entities for the long term.
Broker-dealer Nationwide Planning Associates and two affiliated investment advisers impeded potential whistleblowers from reporting misconduct to the Securities and Exchange Commission and have agreed to settle the charges for a combined $240,000.
RTX Corp., the parent company of Raytheon, agreed to pay $200 million in fines and remediation to address hundreds of export control violations that led to the disclosure of sensitive military secrets.
Raymond James & Associates and its subsidiary agreed to pay more than $1.9 million to settle allegations levied by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority that it didn’t have an effective system to handle customer complaints, along with millions of direct mutual fund transactions not reasonably being supervised.
