The vague “record-keeping requirements and other protections” essentially boil down to a promise from Symphony and the banks that they’ll maintain paper trails of their own should the confidential chatting application be used to do naughty stuff like insider trading.

The banks – Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Bank of New York Mellon, and Credit Suisse – had hoped Symphony would allow traders to chat with far less regulatory oversight by having the ability to erase their paper trail.

Under the terms of the agreements, Symphony will keep all e-communications to and from the four banks for seven years, and the four banks will store duplicate copies of decryption keys with independent custodians.

Financial institutions have paid more than $74 billion in settlements and fines to regulators all over the world for wrongdoing that was traced back to electronic communication, according to data compiled by the CCP Research Foundation that was analyzed by The Post.

Symphony and Dow Jones could not be reached for comment outside regular USA business hours.

In the deal probably to unveiled this week, Symphony will supply all of Dow Jones’ newswire articles, together with content material from the Wall Street Journal and its Factiva archive, FT reported, citing individuals conversant in the state of affairs. The agreement ends the regulator’s probe into the company’s handling of data.

Banks have coalesced around the Silicon Valley startup as the industry seeks ways for employees to instantly and securely communicate with each other.

“This can be a essential difficulty since chats and different digital data have offered key proof in investigations of wrongdoing on Wall Road”, stated Anthony Albanese, division superintendent. Symphony, set to launch this week, is viewed as a potential lower-cost alternative to a popular messaging service on Bloomberg’s terminals.