According to the first report, the complete list of communication apps officially blocked by the British banking and insurance giant Group is more extensive than those of 、 and . The report states that the banking group officially banned these three apps on . However, it is now understood that the list also includes: ; ; ; ; ; and .

A spokesperson for the Royal Bank of Scotland said, "Like many organizations, we only allow the use of approved channels for communicating business matters, whether internally or externally." The bank has long discouraged the use of prohibited communication channels to discuss issues, although the formal ban that took effect on [specific date] reinforced this policy.

The application blocking is only applicable to company-issued devices and is intended to strengthen supervision over official communications when necessary, to protect the company, its clients, and employees from regulatory or legal issues. If the bank is required to restore records, the applications on the prohibited list are considered to have little to no means of restoring records.

This is not a ban on specific social media applications, nor is it a declaration of war against end-to-end encrypted services. One common characteristic among all the banned communication channels is that they all support disappearing messages—messages that are permanently deleted after a given time. If bank employees discuss business, legal, or other matters through these channels, there will be no written records to thoroughly investigate the events, which could lead to trouble.

This does not prevent such chats from occurring on other devices outside the purview of authority, but this situation should not occur even if the bank can control the use of personal devices. This is similar to practices in other areas of banking. For example, for the same reason, conversations and information sent by traders, investment bankers, etc., through Bloomberg terminals are monitored by compliance teams.

This move comes in the context of several banks being fined billions of dollars for poor record-keeping. Over the years, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has issued hefty fines to multiple Wall Street banks, with cumulative penalties exceeding billions of dollars, affecting institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York Mellon, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Invesco Bank.

There is one more issue: the British government is also embroiled in a similar scandal, with ministers discussing government affairs through . Demands for an investigation into the government's handling of the pandemic situation required officials to hand over the complete records of messages, etc. The investigation results were shocking: during the COVID-19 pandemic, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (in office from to , forced to resign) initially refused to comply with the regulations, and it was later revealed that , messages were lost.

The investigation also revealed that Nicola Sturgeon, the then First Minister of Scotland, and other senior figures at the Scottish Parliament's Holyrood location were instructed to delete chat records. Former Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt stated that two years' worth of chat records were deleted, while Rishi Sunak, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (from 2022 to October 2023), informed investigators that he was instructed not to save messages.

Therefore, it is evident why the blocking of certain communication channels would pique the interest of regulatory bodies. On that note: it has been reported that as early as [month], the UK financial regulatory authority was preparing to investigate financial institutions in the City of London to understand their use of encrypted messaging apps and how they monitor these applications.

The list of approved communication channels includes chat, in-meeting chat, and traditional methods, from which all records can be retrieved if necessary.