About Exchange and remote wiping

My employer provides an Exchange account which I can access on my iPhone.

I've been using this for a while, and just recently I noticed the remote wipe feature on the Exchange web app.

I decided to backup my iPhone and try out the feature; my iPhone was completely erased. Not just the Exchange account, but everything.

Now, since my iPhone is owned by me and not my employer, I was a bit astonished that this was possible. Obviously an administrator of my employer would be able to do the same; remotely wipe my iPhone without my consent.

The thing that I'm confused about, is that I have never seen any warning or notice about this. My employer hasn't told me, and the iPhone does not show any warnings when configuring the account.

Are there any other features provided for Exchange administrators which I should be aware of? Are they able to, for example, monitor messages or data transmitted outside the Exchange account (since they're also able to wipe everything outside the Exchange account)? Can they control anything else?

My point is, I'd like to fully understand what I'm implicitly agreeing to when configuring an Exchange account, and it would be great if the device would notify me about all this. Perhaps someone can provide the details on this matter?