Failure to conduct adequate financial crime checks on customer transactions has led to a fine of £16,675,200 for challenger bank
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has called out Metro Bank after it failed to have the right systems and controls in place to adequately monitor over 60 million transactions, with a value of over £51bn, for money laundering risks.
The lack of oversight continued for a four-year period between June 2016 and December 2020.
Metro Bank automated the monitoring of customer transactions for potential financial crime in June 2016. However, its system 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 further transactions until the account record was updated, were not monitored.
