Asia Tech Wire (Aug 15) -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosed on Wednesday that it had fined 26 financial institutions $393 million for WhatsApp-linked investigations.

Twenty-six financial institutions agreed to pay the fines after the regulator said some companies failed to effectively keep electronic records of employee communications, including conversations on instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.

Among them, Ameriprise Financial, Edward Jones, LPL Financial and Raymond James will each pay $50 million to settle with the SEC.

A unit of Royal Bank of Canada will pay $45 million, while TD Bank, Truist Financial and BNY Mellon were among the institutions that agreed to penalties.

The SEC said in its announcement that its investigations "uncovered pervasive and longstanding use of unapproved communication methods," and the companies that agreed to pay the fines admitted to violating record-keeping rules.

Records of financial institutions' internal communications often contain important business and market-sensitive information, and are extremely valuable to regulators.