Bank Negara Malaysia disclosed on 30 July 2025 that it had imposed administrative monetary penalties totalling RM7.29 million on three banks, two of them development financial institutions, penalising Bank Islam, Bank Rakyat, and Bank Simpanan Nasional for breaches of the Development Financial Institutions Act, the Islamic Financial Services Act, and the central bank's technology risk management and anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing policy requirements. All three institutions have settled their respective penalties in full, BNM confirmed in disclosing the enforcement actions.
The breaches covered periods running from 2022 through late 2024, and the penalties were imposed between May and June 2025.
BANK ISLAM PENALISED ON TWO COUNTS
Bank Islam received the largest combined penalty of the three institutions, totalling RM3.445 million across two separate enforcement actions. The first penalty, amounting to RM1.745 million, related to prolonged service disruptions between June 2023 and December 2024 that affected online banking, debit card usage and payment transactions. The second penalty of RM1.7 million was imposed for failures in the bank's AML and counter-terrorism financing sanctions screening processes.
Bank Rakyat was fined RM2.85 million for failing to meet system availability requirements set by the regulator, with BNM documenting multiple outages between June 2023 and December 2024.
BANK SIMPANAN NASIONAL
Bank Simpanan Nasional received a penalty of RM995,000 for service disruption failures between June 2023 and October 2024.