Regulations on working from home for banks are changing, and some of the biggest players in the industry would prefer to bring in employees. five days a week rather than making an effort to comply—including periodic inspections of employees’ homes.
During the pandemic, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the brokerage industry watchdog, suspended rules on workplace inspections to make it easier for banks to allow their employees to work from home. The agency is returning to pre-pandemic workplace monitoring requirements, meaning some home offices will have to register with regulators and be remotely inspected at least every three years under a new pilot program.
Now, some banks were the most flexible with their work from home policies, among others Citigroup, Barclaysand HSBC have decided that compliance with the revised rules is not worth the effort, Bloomberg notify. Between them, the three banks bring thousands of employees back to the office five days a week.
Citigroup said it will require 600 employees who were eligible to work from home to come into the office five days a week, although it said in a statement that most employees could work remotely two days a week, according to the outlet. Barclays cited “new regulatory policies” in a statement as part of the reason thousands of investment bankers around the world are returning to face-to-face five days a week. And HSBC’s 530 employees in New York will soon have to change their telecommuting habits, too, said Mabel Rius, head of human resources for the US and the Americas. Bloomberg.
Michael Roberts, HSBC’s US and Americas CEO, say Bloomberg As long as the bank complies with FINRA regulations, it wants employees to return to the office.
“What we didn’t want to do is force people to simply go back on the decree,” Roberts said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Engaging employees to work in person means hearing why they love coming to the office. Roberts said the bank has absorbed much of that income New US headquarters At Hudson Yards in New York, to make it “comfortable for people to come back.”
“We will comply with FINRA rules. We’re going to make sure that whoever needs to be here five days a week is here five days a week, but I don’t want to decide to turn people away,” Roberts said. “I want to bring them back because they want to come back.”
Meanwhile, other giants of the industry, among others Bank of America and Goldman Sachsthey have already issued mandates for five-day personal weeks.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, perhaps Wall Street’s best-known CEO, has for a long time critical of remote work. Last year, the bank instituted mandatory back-to-the-office policies for older workers, and Dimon said earlier this year that about 60 percent of the bank’s employees were working full-time.
FINRA, for its part, questioned whether its revised policy was to blame for banks’ stricter work-from-home policies. The regulator said a statement that some of its rules were no stricter than they were before the pandemic, and that it had, in fact, adjusted some rules, including allowing remote workplace inspections. The changes “provide member firms with more, not less, flexibility to allow eligible registrants to work from home,” FINRA said.
“FINRA has seen recent statements from firms indicating that strict new FINRA rules will require their employees to return to the office full-time,” he wrote in the statement. “This is correct.”
A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on May 25, 2024.
