US regulators imposed a $350 million penalty and coordinated enforcement orders on American Express over deficiencies in its anti-money laundering controls. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said American Express National Bank failed to maintain a compliance programme suited to its business and risks. The regulator said systemic monitoring and reporting breakdowns meant the bank did not promptly identify, evaluate and sufficiently report about $13 billion of suspected trade-based money laundering activity over the past decade.
The OCC issued a cease-and-desist order alongside the civil penalty, while the Federal Reserve brought a concurrent action against American Express Company and American Express Travel Related Services Company. The Federal Reserve said the group's enterprise-wide programme had significant implementation deficiencies, particularly at its national-bank subsidiary. American Express neither admitted nor denied the regulators' findings, according to Reuters.
CONTROL FAILURES SPANNED STAFFING AND MONITORING
The OCC identified inadequate resources, insufficiently experienced staff, weak training and internal-control gaps. It also found shortcomings in independent testing, customer due diligence and customer-identification procedures. Those weaknesses affected the bank's ability to monitor and report suspicious activity under the Bank Secrecy Act.
The regulator said the bank concentrated its risk assessment on relatively narrow deposit products while giving insufficient attention to its much larger credit and charge-card businesses. That mismatch left its monitoring framework poorly aligned with the activities generating most of the institution's risk. The OCC said the action was intended to focus the bank on bringing its programme into line with the scale and complexity of its operations.
REMEDIATION CONTINUES UNDER COORDINATED ORDERS
Chief executive Stephen Squeri said American Express remained committed to addressing the concerns and improving compliance. He also said the penalty and expected remediation costs were not expected to affect the company's guidance for 2026 or 2027. The penalty will be paid to the US Treasury.
The practical test will be whether American Express can strengthen staffing, governance, risk assessment and suspicious-activity reporting across both the bank and the wider group. The OCC and Federal Reserve orders create separate but coordinated supervisory requirements. Future regulatory updates will show whether the revised controls are operating effectively and whether the identified deficiencies have been fully remediated.