The Securities and Futures Commission fined HSBC HK$2.1 million due to missed phone recordings that covered nearly 6,000 client orders.
According to the SFC, the charge and $268,000 fine was imposed due to «failures to set up or enable voice recording of some of the telephone lines» within HSBC's private banking division between April 8, 2017 and January 31, 2018. In this period, 5,830 client order instructions were received through 59 untaped telephone lines.
Despite the operational failure, the SFC took into consideration the bank’s self-reporting of the failure; cooperation with the regulator; taking action following discovery of the incidents; and agreed to engage an independent party to review the effectiveness of these actions.
The case was originally a Hong Kong Monetary Authority investigation which was then referred to the SFC as part of the «joint enforcement collaboration» between the two watchdogs.
