ICICI Lombard Second Company To Report Leak Of Draft Q3 Result On WhatsApp

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company on Saturday said that a designated person of the company 'inadvertently' uploaded the draft figures of the third quarter financial statements to his personal WhatsApp status, before deleting them.

The incident took place on Jan 9. at around 5:44 p.m., the company said in its exchange filling on Saturday. "Though this information is in draft form and subject to changes during the ongoing audit, as a precautionary measure and in compliance with good corporate governance practices, the Company is reporting this incident to the Stock Exchanges," the company added.

The company said it will be informing the incident to the Audit Committee and the board shortly and will internally probe the matter as per regulatory necessities. It did not disclose the name or designation of the designated persons.

The inquiry committee's report will be disclosed to the public.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India has strict insider trading rules under the Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements Regulations, 2015. Such rules mandate that company insiders can't trade or communicate UPSI to make unfair gains in the securities market.

Earlier this week in a similar incident, Hatsun Agro Product Ltd. said a senior company executive inadvertently uploaded the draft figures of the third quarter financial statements to his personal WhatsApp status.

While sharing the first cut draft of the unaudited financial statements internally with the accounts department of the company, inadvertently uploaded the draft figures to his personal WhatsApp status Sunday evening, according to a stock exchange filing. The draft figures may constitute certain Unpublished Price Sensitive Information (UPSI).

The WhatsApp status was seen by around 19 people in his contact list including some company insiders. Immediately on becoming aware of this incident, the KMP deleted the above WhatsApp Status within an hour's time from his phone, Hatsun Agro said.

Additionally, the company is in the process of including all the persons who viewed the alleged Whatsapp status in its 'Structured Digital Database', the filing said.