The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, a broker-dealer subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase & Co., for widespread and long-standing failures by the firm and its employees to maintain and preserve written communications. JPMS admitted the facts set forth in the SEC’s order and acknowledged that its conduct violated the federal securities laws, and agreed to pay a $125 million penalty and implement improvements to its compliance policies and procedures to settle the matter. As described in the SEC’s order, JPMS admitted that from at least January 2018 through November 2020, its employees often communicated about securities business matters on their personal devices, using text messages, WhatsApp and personal email accounts. None of these records were preserved by the firm as required by the federal securities laws. As a result of the findings in this investigation, the SEC has begun additional investigations of record preservation practices at financial firms.