NatWest Group has blocked WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Skype messaging services on corporate devices in the UK to prevent employees from using them to communicate with each other.
The bank had already told employees to stick to “approved channels” to talk about business matters.
But now it has gone further and made the platforms unavailable on work phones and computers.
So-called off-channel communications is an ongoing issue in both business and politics, and there are concerns that services like WhatsApp are being used to reduce control over some conversations that may be subject to scrutiny.
Messages can be difficult to find or may even disappear, whereas messages sent through approved channels are fully recoverable, meaning they can be checked if an offense is suspected.
“Like many other organizations, we only allow the use of approved channels to communicate on business matters, both internally and externally,” NatWest said in a statement.
The statement said the changes came into effect earlier this month.
Over the past few years, banks in the United States have been fined more than $2.8 billion (£2.18 billion) for violating record-keeping rules – because employees could not retrieve old messages from some messaging services.
Among those who will be fined are JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citigroup.
In August, the UK banking regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), considered checking how bank employees use messaging services.
This came after energy regulator Ofgem fined Morgan Stanley for making calls from private phones via WhatsApp, which is a violation of record-keeping rules.
Outside of the banking sector, there have been issues with the app’s use in the public sector, including questions about how ministers have used WhatsApp to work in government in recent years.
The UK’s Covid investigation revealed that officials and ministers deleted WhatsApp messages they exchanged during the pandemic.
Among them was then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt told the inquiry that messages with him had disappeared for two years. Johnson told the investigation that he had lost about 5,000 messages.
