When people hear “HIPAA” and “FINRA,” they assume two totally different compliance worlds.
Healthcare is about patient privacy. Finance is about markets and banking. Different acronyms, different regulators, different risks. Right? Well, not exactly.
When you zoom in on communications record-keeping, the DNA is strikingly similar between HIPAA and SEC/FINRA communication regulations.
Let’s look at the shared regulation philosophies and highlight key differences between the two highly-regulated industries.
The Shared Philosophy: A Defensible Record
Before comparing how healthcare and financial regulators approach enforcement, it’s important to clarify what qualifies as a communications record under HIPAA.
HIPAA compliance communications records are any messages (email, text, chat, images, or platform-based communications) that contain or relate to PHI and must be retained, auditable, and safeguarded under the HIPAA Security Rule.
At a high level, HIPAA and financial regulations share the same premise: compliance depends on whether records can be reconstructed, examined, and defended after the fact.
Under HIPAA, this expectation is enforced primarily through the Security Rule, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009, which expanded HIPAA’s reach to business associates and strengthened requirements around audit controls, breach notification, and enforcement. Together, these rules require covered entities and their vendors to implement administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect electronic PHI (ePHI).
For communications, this means organizations must demonstrate how messages containing PHI are protected, who can access them, when access occurs, and whether those records can be altered or deleted without detection.
If an organization can’t reliably reconstruct a chain of communication with records that are complete, auditable, and protected, then it doesn’t have compliance. The intention is to protect end users and ensure that the professionals are being, well, professional.
This enforcement logic mirrors what financial regulators apply under SEC Rule 17a-4. Regulators don’t just ask what you retained. They ask:
- Can it be altered?
- Can it be deleted?
- Can you produce it quickly?
- Can you prove it’s complete?
HIPAA asks the same questions, but through a privacy lens:
- Was Protected Health Information (PHI) protected?
- Was access logged?
- Were safeguards enforced?
- Can you show evidence, not just policy?
In both sectors, paper policies are required, but just having policies in place isn’t enough.
Processes must be demonstrably controlled in practice, meaning organizations can show training records, enforced access controls, immutable or integrity-protected archives, and audit logs that survive scrutiny after the fact.
Where HIPAA and FINRA Are Aligned
Communications are records.
Without regurgitating everything we’ve said about financial communication records, the ultimate point is that all comms are records - regardless of the difference between these industries.
These communications must be recorded and preserved. If business happens in:
- SMS / iMessage
- WhatsApp / Signal
- Microsoft Teams
- Internal chat tools
- Patient or client messaging platforms
- Hand-written carrier pigeon notes
- Social media influencers
- Collaboration tools
- Faxes, yes, in 2026
…it’s a record.
In healthcare, this includes appointment reminders, care coordination messages, billing communications, patient intake follow-ups, clinical images, and post-visit instructions. If those messages include identifiers tied to an individual’s health status, treatment, or payment, they may constitute PHI and fall under HIPAA’s documentation and safeguard requirements.
Whether it’s a broker sending a WhatsApp message about a trade, or a doctor’s assistant texting an appointment reminder, “informal” doesn’t mean exempt.
Retention is about auditable, preserved storage.
This is not the time for “we took a screenshot.”
FINRA’s WORM (write one, read many) standard under 17a-4 exists for one reason: history can’t be rewritten - not in the financial industry.
HIPAA doesn’t use the term “WORM” but it imposes comparable expectations around integrity and auditability for electronic and written communication records. Unlike SEC Rule 17a-4, HIPAA does not mandate immutable storage, but it does require integrity controls sufficient to detect unauthorized alteration or destruction, placing the burden on organizations to prove records are trustworthy after the fact.
HIPAA requires:
- Integrity controls
- Audit trails
- Protection against improper alteration or destruction
It employs different language with the same general expectation.
A message that can be edited, deleted, or selectively produced is a liability in both worlds.
Accessibility vs Encryption across HIPAA communications
One of the biggest misconceptions across industries is that encryption alone equals compliance. Accessibility matters as much as encryption in electronic records.
Look at WhatsApp. It’s inherently encrypted. Signal? Same thing. But what happens when a message is deleted? Does the message exist? Not on the device any longer - so that’s where things get fuzzy.
Encrypted systems that allow:
- user-side deletion
- non-logged access
- selective production
can still fail HIPAA audits if records can’t be reconstructed.
From a HIPAA perspective, encryption protects confidentiality, but auditability protects accountability.
During OCR investigations, organizations are often asked to produce access logs, message histories, and documentation showing when PHI was accessed, by whom, and whether any content was altered or deleted. Yes, encryption matters, but that’s not the end of the line.
FINRA, HIPAA, SEC… they don’t care if a message was encrypted if you can’t retrieve it promptly.
Even large, well-resourced organizations can misinterpret HIPAA’s expectations. In 2025, the HHS Office for Civil Rights imposed a $1.5 million civil monetary penalty on Warby Parker, finding violations of the HIPAA Security Rule tied to inadequate risk analysis, insufficient safeguards, and failure to monitor system activity. This underscores how HIPAA requires actionable, verifiable controls, not just documentation, to protect electronic PHI.
In these cases, regulators expect:
- Searchable records
- Timely production
- Clear lineage and metadata
Encryption without accessibility is security theater, …kinda like the TSA.
Culture determines compliance outcomes
FINRA enforcement has shown that most failures happen because people routed around the existing systems. The great cultural divide.
HIPAA violations often follow the same pattern:
- “Just text me”
- “It’s faster on Slack”
- “I’ll document it later”
In healthcare settings, this often shows up in care coordination texts, ad-hoc image sharing, informal scheduling updates, or “quick questions” sent outside official systems, all of which can contain PHI.
Off-channel communications are work-cultural problems before they’re technical ones. This goes back to the idea that banning apps is futile when the behavior is ingrained. If you want a communicative work environment that keeps your employees and customers (or patients) safe, it has to go beyond app bans. Capture what’s actually being said, regardless of where.
Where HIPAA and FINRA Diverge (And Why That Matters)
Privacy vs. market integrity
FINRA’s priority is market fairness and investor protection.
HIPAA’s priority is patient privacy and harm prevention.
That changes:
- Who can access records
- How broadly records can be reviewed
- How disclosures are handled
Documentation timelines differ
US-based Finance retention schedules are explicit (3 years, 6 years, etc.) HIPAA is more principles-based, tied to documentation requirements and state overlays.
That ambiguity can trip up vendors, resulting in looser compliance standards.
Ironically, teams used to SEC & FINRA regs often over-document rather than under-document. Regulators aren’t going to fine your firm for keeping communications stored for 4 years when the absolute requirement is three.
Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) change vendor accountability
One key difference between healthcare and finance regulatory bodies is the Business Associate Agreement (BAA). A BAA is a required contract between a healthcare organization and any vendor that creates, receives, maintains, or transmits protected health information (PHI). It extends HIPAA obligations to vendors, defining required safeguards, breach-notification responsibilities, and enforcement consequences.
Unlike financial compliance frameworks, HIPAA makes vendors directly accountable, not just operationally, but contractually and regulatorily.
That introduces:
- Contractual compliance obligations
- Shared liability
- Vendor scrutiny beyond “security posture”
Why Financial-Grade Compliance Becomes an Unfair Advantage
Firms built under FINRA and SEC scrutiny tend to internalize a few hard lessons early:
- Assume regulators will ask “prove it,” not “explain it.”
- Design systems as if every message may be examined.
- Expect enforcement to focus on records failures, not intent.
- Treat audit readiness as a daily state, not an event.
Those instincts translate cleanly into HIPAA communications compliance.
Healthcare and finance are not the same, but regulators behave the same when records are missing, so compliant record-keeping, while not identical, relies on the same secure procedures.
What Doesn’t transfer between the healthcare and financial industries
Our experience at Comma is largely in the financial sector, but we’ve quickly grown to understand that healthcare includes a variety of aspects.
Healthcare introduces:
- Clinical workflows
- Patient consent dynamics
- Care delivery nuances
- State-level privacy overlays
HIPAA and FINRA have different accents, but share the same grammar.
When you set out to construct a building, be it a skyscraper or a bungalow, you start with a solid foundation. In compliance, that foundation looks the same across industries: complete communication records, tamper-resistant storage, clear audit trails, and human oversight aligned with how people actually work.
HIPAA and FINRA may govern different domains, but they share a core expectation: if communications can’t be reconstructed, audited, and defended, compliance breaks down. Finance regulations spell this out explicitly. HIPAA leaves more room for interpretation, but that flexibility doesn’t reduce responsibility.
Communication technology will continue to evolve. The standard for defensible records won’t.
