The Financial Conduct Authority has fined Metro Bank £16.7mn for failing to monitor transaction data for potential money laundering.
According to the City watchdog, between June 2016 and December 2020, Metro failed to have the right systems and controls to adequately monitor more than 60mn transactions, with a value of more than £51bn, for money laundering risks.
In June 2016, the bank automated the monitoring of customer transactions for potential financial crime however its systems did not work as intended.
An error in how data was fed into the system meant transactions taking place on the same day an account was opened and any transactions until the account record was updated, were not monitored.
The FCA reported that junior staff had raised concerns about some transaction data not being monitored in 2017 and 2018 but these did not result in the issue being identified or fixed.
Even after the issue was fixed in July 2019, Metro Bank did not have a mechanism to consistently check that all relevant transactions were being fed into the monitoring system until December 2020, more than four years after the system had been implemented.
Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said: “Metro's failings risked a gap being left in our defence against the criminal misuse of our financial system. Those failings went on for too long.”
Since the bank identified the issues with its transaction monitoring system in April 2019, it has put in pace processes to remediate them, according to the FCA.
alina.khan@ft.com
