Managing Zoom for Financial Services

The collective reliance on Zoom during the pandemic cannot be overstated. The conferencing platform’s daily meeting participants in December 2019 averaged around 10 million. By April 2020, just four months later, that number had grown to more than 300 million — a whopping 2,900% increase. Many organizations are now reliant on Zoom as a business-critical communication channel. In lieu of conference room meetings, coffee shop chats, and water cooler conversations, “Zooming” has become the new normal for connecting with colleagues and clients. But what are the implications of our dependence on Zoom? For financial services organizations, the sudden shift to Zoom as a foundational business tool introduced new security and compliance risks and uncertainty about how to interpret and fulfill regulatory obligations. Regulated firms must gauge the benefits and risks of tools like Zoom, whether to allow or prohibit its use and how to preserve and monitor Zoom content for compliance.