Metro Bank has been fined £16.7m by the FCA for significant failures in its systems and controls.
The bank inadequately monitored over 60m transactions worth more than £51bn for potential money laundering risks between June 2016 and December 2020.
The issues began when Metro automated its transaction monitoring system in June 2016. Unfortunately, a critical error in the data input process led to transactions conducted on the same day an account was opened being overlooked, along with any subsequent transactions until the account records were updated.
Despite junior staff raising concerns in 2017 and 2018 about some transaction data not being monitored, the issues were neither identified nor resolved effectively at the time.
It wasn’t until July 2019 that a fix was implemented. However, Metro failed to establish a reliable mechanism to ensure all relevant transactions were consistently fed into the monitoring system until December 2020, more than four years after the system’s initial deployment.
Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, emphasised the severity of these oversights, stating, “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 identifying the deficiencies in April 2019, Metro has implemented processes to address and remediate the issues uncovered. The FCA continues to supervise firms rigorously to ensure they maintain robust systems and controls to manage financial crime risks.
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