ICICI Lombard General Insurance, a unit of India’s second-largest private lender, said an employee uploaded undisclosed information about third quarter earnings as a personal WhatsApp status, days ahead of the planned release.
The worker, who broadcast the information after market hours on Friday, deleted the “status” within an hour, the ICICI Bank unit said in a filing to bourses. ICICI Lombard said it has started an internal inquiry.
It was the latest mishap in India’s $5.2 trillion stock market, after dairy-product maker Hatsun Agro Product this week flagged a similar case of an employee accidentally leaking a draft of quarterly results on WhatsApp.
Sebi has over the years tightened regulations involving handling of unpublished information by employees, including directing companies to create a framework for tracking ownership of such data.
While the incidents have been isolated, they reignite concerns over insider trading and information leaks in the world’s fifth-largest stock market, following a string of alleged leaks of company earnings on WhatsApp groups in 2017 which triggered a Sebi investigation.