The Financial Conduct Authority has fined Metro Bank £16,675,200 for systemic failures in its anti-money laundering monitoring systems, the regulator announced on 12 November 2024. The penalty follows an investigation that found the bank left more than 60 million transactions, totalling in excess of £51 billion, inadequately monitored for money-laundering risks over a period of more than four years, from June 2016 to December 2020.

The breaches identified by the FCA relate to failures in automated transaction monitoring systems that Metro Bank relied upon to screen customer activity against money-laundering risk indicators. The FCA determined that the bank breached Principle 3 of its Principles for Businesses, which requires firms to take reasonable care to organise and control their affairs responsibly and effectively. The Final Notice also cites SYSC 6.1.1R, SYSC 6.3.1R and SYSC 6.3.3R of the Senior Management Arrangements, Systems and Controls sourcebook, provisions that set specific requirements for the organisational arrangements firms must maintain to guard against the risk of financial crime.

FOUR YEARS OF UNMONITORED TRANSACTIONS

Over the period in question, deficiencies in Metro Bank's automated systems meant that tens of millions of transactions were processed without being subject to the level of scrutiny required under the Money Laundering Regulations. The regulator found that a data-feed error meant transactions made on the day an account was opened, or before the account record was updated, bypassed the automated monitoring system, and that Metro had no controls to check the completeness of data feeding into the system.

Many of the transactions were later reviewed in a lookback exercise completed in 2022, which led Metro to submit 153 suspicious activity reports.

SETTLEMENT DISCOUNT

Metro Bank qualified for a 30% discount on the penalty by agreeing to settle at an early stage of the FCA's enforcement proceedings, reducing the fine from its calculated figure to the £16,675,200 ultimately imposed. Without the discount, the FCA would have imposed a penalty of £23,821,700.

The FCA acknowledged the historic nature of the failings and said Metro Bank has since remediated the issues and invested extensively in its financial crime framework.