The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined UBS Financial Services Inc. USD 20 million on 3 August 2026, citing repeat failures in the anti-money laundering monitoring of foreign currency wires. FINRA said the deficiencies persisted from January 2019 through June 2023.
According to the FINRA news release, more than 60,000 foreign currency wires with a combined value of over USD 10 billion were not reasonably monitored during the period. The action was announced the same day as a parallel US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network settlement carrying a USD 125 million penalty.
REPEAT FAILINGS OVER FOUR YEARS
FINRA said the monitoring failures at UBS Financial Services covered a four-and-a-half-year period between January 2019 and June 2023, during which more than 60,000 foreign currency wires with an aggregate value in excess of USD 10 billion were not subject to reasonable AML surveillance. The regulator characterised the deficiencies as a repetition of concerns it had previously identified at the firm.
A prior FINRA action in 2018 had imposed a USD 4.5 million fine on UBS for similar shortcomings, but the regulator said the firm subsequently failed to remediate the legacy monitoring system that lay at the heart of the problem. "This action underscores FINRA's approach to progressive discipline, which includes escalating sanctions for recidivist misconduct," said Bill St. Louis, FINRA's head of enforcement.
UBS Financial continued to use the legacy system until January 2021, and the automated monitoring tool it introduced in February 2021 omitted a significant share of activity, including about 33% of foreign currency wires in retail accounts approved for foreign currency spot activity, FINRA said.
PARALLEL FINCEN ACTION
The FINRA fine was announced on the same day as a parallel action by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which carried a USD 125 million penalty against UBS in connection with the foreign currency wire monitoring failings. FinCEN credited the USD 20 million FINRA fine, together with USD 20 million paid to the SEC and USD 8 million paid to the CFTC, against its USD 125 million penalty, so the total resolution across the four agencies is USD 125 million.
"Member firms operating in global markets bear a responsibility to design and implement AML programs that are tailored to their business model and capable of reasonably monitoring transactions for potentially suspicious activity," St. Louis said. FINRA also found that UBS Financial did not reasonably implement its customer due diligence programme for certain retail customers, including some with connections to higher-risk locations such as Russia, and failed to timely detect and report suspicious money movements by those customers.
FINRA published the news release on its website, setting out the terms of the settlement and the basis for the fine. UBS Financial accepted and consented to the entry of FINRA's findings without admitting or denying them.