Goldman pays $5.5M over allegation it didn’t record calls

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission alleged that two outside systems Goldman relied on to record conversations sometimes failed in 2020.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. agreed to pay $5.5 million to settle a U.S. regulator’s allegations that it failed to fully record and retain thousands of phone calls.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission alleged Tuesday that two separate outside systems the Wall Street giant relied on to record some audio conversations, as required by the regulator, sometimes failed during 2020. In 2019, the firm settled CFTC allegations it failed to record the phone lines of a trading and sales desk in 2014.

“We are pleased to have this matter resolved,” Goldman Sachs said in a statement. The bank did not admit to or deny the regulator’s allegations in settling the case.

The CFTC, which regulates swap dealers like Goldman, said that increased use of a service employed to record calls on mobile devices during the pandemic caused a vendor’s system to sometimes not record calls.

A separate service used to replicate a trading turret while working from home also had lapses, the regulator alleged. Both systems have since been fixed, the CFTC said.