Monday, January 28, 2013

US FFIEC: Proposed Guidance on Social Media

Regulators Address Emerging Social Media Risks to Banking Institutions

The US Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council has issued proposed risk management guidance for the use of social media.

"Social Media: Consumer Compliance Risk Management Guidance," was posted on the Federal Register Jan. 23. It provides an overview of the impact social media sites have on compliance with consumer protection and other applicable laws, especially when interactions between institutions and consumers take place on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Employees could be using social media from different devices or from home at night. If their accounts are taken over, then a criminal could be posting on that site, giving advice to steer customers to do something they shouldn't, or posting a link that leads them to a malicious site.

There certainly are a lot risks banks need to think about when they start to use social media. The proposed guidance is really about risk assessment. The guidance is intended to help financial institutions understand potential consumer compliance, legal, reputation and operational risks associated with the use of social media, along with expectations for managing those risks.

Although the guidance does not impose additional obligations on financial institutions, the FFIEC expects financial institutions to take steps to manage potential risks associated with social media, as they would with any new process or product channel.

The FFIEC will accept comments on the proposed guidance through March 25. It will publish a final version once it reviews comments received.

1 comment:

Jesse Torres said...

Hope these tools help:

Social Media Risk Assessment: http://socialmediabanking.blogspot.com/2012/03/social-media-risk-assessment-process.html

Social Media Policy: http://socialmediabanking.blogspot.com/2012/08/sample-social-media-policy-for-banks.html

Social Media Training Tool: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1456533126/internalcontrolrA/