Nationwide Building Society has been fined £44m by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) over ‘egregious’ money laundering failures, although the final penalty was reduced by 30% from £62.9m as the regulator said they ‘agreed to resolve this matter’.

For five years, Nationwide failed to check customers properly and let thousands of customers user their personal accounts for business, which should have been a red flag as it meant it was ignoring the firm’s ‘transaction monitoring alerts’.

Between October 2016 and July 2021, the FCA said Nationwide had ‘ineffective systems for keeping up-to-date due diligence and risk assessments’. This led to ‘unacceptable risk so inconsistent or unusual activity by customers might remain undetected’.

The F