After whistleblowers played a prominent role in BNP Paribas SA’s $9 billion settlement with the U.S. authorities, some are calling for federal regulators to expand whistleblower protection to banks and insurance companies. Currently, whistleblowers who report securities and commodities violations are awarded a share of fines collected by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC). The SEC has compensated eight whistleblowers with awards that reached as high as $14 million, and the CFTC issued its first award of $240,000 in May.

New York Department of Financial Services has been pushing for state legislation to expand whistleblower protections to banks and insurance companies. The Department, whose jurisdiction includes Wall Street, proposed a bill that would allow whistleblowers to receive monetary awards for reporting violations of banking law and protect them from retaliation by employers. But it was not acted on in this year’s session, and national banking representatives have expressed opposition to such whistleblower programs.

Opposition from the industry warned that a whistleblower program would lead individuals to “avoid even the most highly effective internal (reporting) policies in order to preserve and protect the possibility, no matter how remote, of receiving large cash awards.” Meanwhile, there are no signs that Congress or federal banking regulators are considering plans for a new whistleblower program.

Read the entire article, “BNP case spurs calls for whistleblower incentives in banking”
Read our earlier post on the BNP Paribas settlement, “BNP Paribas to Plead Guilty and Pay $8.9 Billion for Violating US Economic Sanctions”