—GLOBAL RELAY DATA INSIGHTS
Communication Capture Trends in 2025/26
What does the data of over 12,000 financial institutions reveal about recordkeeping and surveillance priorities?
Global Relay Data Insights: Communication Capture Trends in 2025/26 What does the data of over 12,000 financial institutions reveal about recordkeeping and surveillance priorities?
—About Global Relay
Top 10 communication channels captured through Global Relay Connectors
“Traditional” business communications channels persist as the most captured—however, throughout 2025, an 11% increase in accounts capturing Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) may have contributed to Instant Bloomberg falling out of the top three, with only a 2% increase.
Firms prioritizing the capture of LinkedIn pages, whether company pages or individual accounts, continues to increase, though the data would suggest they are beginning to focus on company accounts more than they have in previous years.
Notably, while the majority of social media–focused Global Relay Connectors have increased in popularity throughout 2025, X (formerly Twitter) continues to see a decline in the number of firms seeking to capture and archive its communications.
In 2023, Global Relay’s first Communication Capture Trends report showed that 20% of sampled Global Relay accounts were capturing X as a business communication channel.
In 2024, the number of accounts capturing X fell by 8% year over year (YoY).
This was attributable to a number of factors:
The company had been taken over by Elon Musk and rebranded, with Sensor Tower reporting that daily users of the app fell by 23% over the course of 2023.
In February 2023, X updated its API access model so that enterprises would have to pay up to $42,000 a month to access data from X.
The number of businesses using X as an advertising platform fell, with Kantar reporting that 26% of marketers intended to reduce their use of X in 2025. Throughout 2025, we have seen a further 3% reduction in the number of firms looking to capture business communications made through X. This is likely a direct result of market activityin preceding years.
In June 2025, it was reported that X will again be reviewing its API model to introduce a “revenue-sharing pricing model.”
As business engagement falls and the cost to capture data from X increases, it’s evident why firms may be deprioritizing X as a business communication channel.
Global Relay’s Communication Capture Trends Report for 2024 saw a significant increase in the number of firms prioritizing the capture of business communications made from employees’ personal social media accounts. In 2025, those numbers have largely plateaued, while the capture of company pages has increased.
There has also been a 14% increase in the number of firms capturing LinkedIn corporate messaging. Firms are aligning their focus with global regulators and increasingly capturing channels that can be used to distribute marketing messaging—accurate or otherwise.
Across 2024 into 2025, financial regulators have demonstrated a clear focus toward tackling false advertising, fraud, and marketing infractions:
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has conducted multiple sweeps and issued a number of charges to firms that have “advertised hypothetical performance to the general public on their websites without adopting and implementing policies and procedures” in accordance with the SEC’s Marketing Rule.
The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published Finalised Guidance (FG24/1) on financial promotions made on social media.
Financial services more generally have seen an upswing in the legitimization of cryptocurrencies, and an accompanying slew of guidance and legislation governing how such assets can be promoted. In Europe, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) harmonizes EU-wide obligations around the marketing and promotions of cryptocurrency.
Which channels have firms prioritized in 2025?
The capture of most business communication channels has stayed broadly consistent YoY, with generally small increases across the board.
However, a few channels have seen significant interest from firms.
To explore these emerging trends in depth, jump to the “Exploring communication capture trends in 2025” section of the report.
See here
Are U.S. and U.K. firms prioritizing different channels?
This illustration shows the six most captured communication channels by U.S. and U.K. financial organizations. As in previous years, it shows a jurisdictional split in communications capture priorities, which mirrors differing regulatory frameworks and focuses in these regions.
Significant regional differences match regulatory priorities
While the most popular data connectors in the U.S. and the U.K. show broadly similar priorities, the data reveals significant regional differences in the capture of both WhatsApp and ChatGPT.
Explore the increase in ChatGPT capture by jumping to page 9.
Explore the increase in WhatsApp capture by jumping to page 14.
While, broadly speaking, “traditional” business communication channels are consistently captured regardless of vertical, there are interesting variations in the most captured channels across different industry types. The following graphs show the top five most-captured channels across verticals and how differing business operations result in different channels being prioritized.
Despite initial skeptical attitudes on the use of generative AI (GenAI) platforms in the workplace, ChatGPT and similar platforms have fast become a widely used resource for many financial services firms.
The applications of ChatGPT in financial services are far reaching—from writing code to writing copy to providing customer support to performing research. Specific use cases can include managing know-your-customer queries, and drafting emails, meeting summaries, and marketing materials or scripts.
Notable companies using ChatGPT or associated large language models (LLMs) include:
Madrid-based bank BBVA, which, in March 2024, signed an agreement with OpenAI for 3,000 ChatGPT Enterprise licenses.
Deloitte UK, which, in January 2024, gave around 75,000 staff members access to a GenAI-powered assistant to help them “create PowerPoint presentations and write emails and code”.
JPMorgan Chase, which gave employees access to a GenAI assistant built by the makers of OpenAI to “summarize, translate, predict, and generate text”.
As financial institutions look to reduce costs, minimize headcount, and increase efficiency, the guardrails—which initially saw regulators ban ChatGPT over privacy concerns—have loosened for using GenAI in organizations.
However, as use cases become more deeply entrenched within business-as-usual workflows and communications, they become subject to recordkeeping regulations, likely resulting in the increased number of organizations seeking to capture ChatGPT data.
In a September 2025 study, ChatGPT reported 700 million users per week, with 2 million businesses having integrated ChatGPT into workflows.
And, according to OpenAI, 92% of Fortune 500 companies are using the consumer version of ChatGPT.
Contrary to conventional perceptions, TikTok is fast becoming a business channel for regulated industries.
According to Statista, in 2025, 26% of businesses use TikTok as a marketing channel.
In addition to being used as a platform to promote services and investments, TikTok is increasingly being used by financial services firms to harness the power of finance influencers, or “finfluencers,” to promote products and services to a wider, less traditional audience. As such, TikTok poses a series of risks.
As a venue for off-channel communications, where employees or individuals discuss financial products or services or business outside of recorded channels.
As a channel that could be used to spread information (or disinformation) that could inspire market swings or volatile economic movement.
As a platform on which firms can advertise products and services, and potentially fall foul of marketing rules or consumer duties, or where finfluencers could share information in an unauthorized or misleading capacity.
A rise in the use of TikTok as a marketing channel has likely contributed to the increase in the number of accounts capturing data from the platform. Where businesses are using it to promote investment services or advertise products, these communications are considered “financial promotions” under FCA regulations or “retail communications” under Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and SEC rules. TikTok content must therefore be retained if used in business, promotional, marketing, or client interaction capacities. Increased regulatory focus on social media will influence how firms approach TikTok as a compliance risk. The FCA’s FG24/1 - Finalised guidance on financial promotions on social media was published in 2024 and clarifies the U.K. regulator’s “expectations of firms and others, such as influencers, communicating financial promotions on social media.” As seen from the “war on WhatsApp,” firms tend to implement compliance solutions in the areas where regulatory focus is strongest. The increase in accounts capturing TikTok is, therefore, likely a direct response to regulatory action.
Regulators have also issued a suite of fines and punitive actions against businesses and finfluencers alike throughout 2024/25:
In September 2024, the SEC charged nine firms a combined $1.24 million for multiple violations of the Marketing Rule, including advertising “hypothetical performance” to the public via social media accounts.
In June 2025, nine regulators from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, and the U.K.—led by the FCA—took part in an international crackdown on “illegal finfluencers.” This led to three arrests, three authorized criminal proceedings, and 50 warning alerts.
In August 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued several letters to pharmaceutical companies for posting false and misleading advertisements via paid influencer posts.
In September 2025, the SEC fined a firm $75,000 for Marketing Rule infractions.
For more on the risks that TikTok and social media pose to firms, see Journal of Financial Compliance, “Social media as a compliance risk for financial services.”
The number of firms using data connectors to capture Apple® Messages has grown by 114% throughout 2025. In 2023, FINRA issued Deloitte Corporate Finance, LLC with a $75,000 fine for its failure to “retain business-related iMessages […] on 95 firm-owned Apple iPhones.” Both bring-your-own and corporate-issued devices are statistically likely to be iPhones, with Apple® Messages among the most-used messaging applications. Despite some fines for failure to retain Apple® Messages, to date, most regulatory focus for recordkeeping failures has been on WhatsApp.
In many instances, this has seen compliance teams banning the use of WhatsApp. Global Relay Industry Insights: Compliant Communications 2025 found that 40% of firms ban or block WhatsApp in light of regulatory scrutiny. It’s likely that the proliferation of iPhones, the move away from WhatsApp for business communications, and threat of regulatory fines have led to an increase in employees using Apple® Messages as an alternative—influencing a clear uptick in the number of firms capturing this data.
Influenced by several years of concentrated regulatory enforcements and associated fines, last year saw a 258% increase in the number of accounts capturing WhatsApp communications—from 1.2% to 4.3%.
We predicted that “this figure will continue to increase in line with persistent regulatory action” three months before publishing our 2024 report.
Proving to be a perennial topic, in 2025, there has been a further 36% increase in the number of accounts capturing business communications through WhatsApp. Under the new U.S. presidential administration, the initial expectation was that recordkeeping expectations would loosen.
However, off-channel communications have remained a regulatory priority—and a compliance risk area.
Timeline of actions taken for off-channel communications since November 2024
Nov 6, 2024
Acting SEC Commissioner Sanjay Wadhwa says that the SEC will continue to focus on off-channel communications, including WhatsApp.
Jan 13, 2025
SEC fines 12 firms a combined $63M for recordkeeping failures relating to WhatsApp and other off-channel communications breaches.
Apr 14, 2025
SEC denies a motion raised by 16 firms to amend previously agreed off-channel communications settlements.
Jul 17, 2025
FINRA fines a representative $15,000 for concealing unauthorized profit sharing in “thousands” of off-channel text messages.
Jan 28, 2025
FCA confirms it’s “not planning any wholesale rules” for how firms may use WhatsApp.
Aug 7, 2025
FCA publishes results of a survey finding 178 breaches of policies that sought to block or ban WhatsApp, among other channels.
It’s clear that U.S. regulators stand firm on off-channel communications. In the U.K., firms have been told that the FCA will not act aggressively regarding WhatsApp, but the regulator is watching to see whether firms meet expectations.
Unsurprisingly, of the 5.7% of accounts capturing WhatsApp data, 89% are U.S.-based firms, compared to 4% of U.K.-based and 7% of firms based in the rest of the world (RoW).
Regulatory clarity and punitive fines are primary drivers for firms purchasing and implementing data connectors.
On September 15, 2025, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said in an exclusive interview with the Financial Times that he disagreed with the billions of dollars in Gensler-imposed fines for banks and brokers that violated recordkeeping rules, and he advocated for a softer approach to regulation.
It will be interesting to see whether this has any bearing on the number of firms that continue to capture certain communication channels in 2026.
ChatGPT and GenAI capture are only just getting started
Between September 2023 and September 2024, Global Relay saw a 400% increase in firms capturing conversations, attachments, and exchanges from ChatGPT.
Between September 2024 and September 2025, this skyrocketed, with a 2,900% increase.
AI assistants and productivity tools will need to be captured
Increasingly, financial services firms are using AI tools to enhance customer service teams and marketing messaging. Tools such as Microsoft Copilot are becoming more commonly embedded into workflows as a standard practice. These tools can create marketing messaging, draft customer communications, and resolve low-level customer complaints. One such service, Sprinklr, offers “automated customer support” across social media platforms and purports to create a “digital twin”—an AI version of each employee with the tagline “go beyond conversations; make decisions, design workflows, and execute tasks at scale.”
For highly regulated industries, these tools can introduce efficiencies but will need to meet the same benchmarks that apply to human-driven interactions, including recordkeeping requirements and the Marketing Rule. As these tools are more widely adopted, firms will need to capture and store the generated data.
Firms that have created their own internal AI assistants will need to work with vendors to create custom APIs to capture and archive that data. Our data shows that, across 2025, there was a 12% increase in firms working with Global Relay to create custom data connectors to manage data from bespoke, internal platforms.
Over the course of 2026, this figure will likely rise.
Regulatory changes will extend the scope of firms capturing business communications
Over the next year, the scope of existing recordkeeping and conduct requirements will likely be extended to a wider pool of organizations. Despite cross-territorial messaging on deregulation and a reduction in “regulatory burdens” and “red tape,” a series of proposals look set to introduce recordkeeping and monitoring requirements to a new subset of firms.
U.S. proposals to broaden recordkeeping rules to crypto assets
In the U.S., the SEC has published its Spring 2025 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.
It states:
“The Division is considering recommending that the Commission amend […] broker-dealer financial responsibility rules, as well as Rules 17a-3 and 17a-4, to address the application of these rules to crypto assets.”
If these changes are passed, it’s plausible that businesses dealing with cryptocurrency or crypto assets will be required to capture and retain business comms data in the same way that other regulated firms are currently.
U.K. proposals to extend non-financial misconduct rules to 37,000 firms
In July 2025, the FCA outlined proposals to extend non-financial misconduct rules that presently apply to banks to “around 37,000 other regulated firms.” The current rules exist as a means of measuring culture and governance in financial services.
As FCA Chief Operating Officer Emily Shepperd noted previously:
“Time and again, when we investigate failures of consumer protection or market conduct, what do we find? The same root cause: Failings in culture and governance. That is no coincidence. Because it is culture that drives conduct. Culture that shapes decisions and actions at every level.”
To monitor and surveil for signs of non-financial misconduct, firms must have a complete repository of all communication data across every channel. Therefore, we’ll likely see an uptick in the number of firms looking to capture communication channels—including social media—in advance of the proposed September 2026 deadline to monitor for and control culture-based risk.
The Global Relay Data Insights: Communication Capture Trends in 2025/26 report references the communication capture data collected from a cross-section of more than 12,000 bank, broker-dealer, fund management, and other regulated financial services firms.
These organizations are required to comply with regulatory archiving and recordkeeping requirements for electronic communications data. The data referenced in this report looks, in particular, at Global Relay Connectors, which capture data from communication channels and deliver that data into a compliant archive.
As such, this report provides a unique view into the evolution of communication in financial services. It reveals unique insights into the most commonly captured communication channels in financial service organizations worldwide and establishes which channels of communication are a priority in 2025.
This report and the graphs therein refer to data collected by Global Relay Communications Inc. The information, materials, and opinions contained in this report are for general information purposes only, are not intended to constitute legal or other professional advice, and should not be relied on or treated as a substitute for specific advice relevant to particular circumstances.
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