Strict investment policy is lawful

My wife works for a nationwide bank in a noninvestment role. In other words, she isn’t in a position to commit insider trading. Yet the bank now forces all its employees to use its investment services exclusively. Can this draconian policy be legal?

The policy is legal, and knowing why perhaps will help you to understand the reason for it.

Requiring employees to invest with the bank allows it to monitor their transactions and helps it to prevent insider-information abuses.

The steps that banks take to monitor their transactions are something regulators take into account when looking at the companies’ books.

Your comment suggests that your wife’s company failed to explain its strict requirement. To simply say that “it’s company policy” is never enough. That terse answer only encourages grumbling. If companies want employees to buy into a policy, they need to explain why it was enacted.