Metro Bank fined over £16m for “financial crime failings” | Weekly Words of Wisdom

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Metro Bank PLC (Metro) £16,675,200 for failing to maintain suitable systems and controls to effectively monitor over 60 million transactions for potential money laundering risks.

Metro Bank introduced an automated system in June 2016 to monitor customer transactions for signs of financial crime but this system did not perform as expected. A data input error prevented transactions on the day an account was opened—and any further transactions until the account records were fully updated—from being monitored.

Junior staff flagged concerns in 2017 and 2018 about some transaction data not being tracked, but these concerns did not lead to the issue being properly identified or resolved. Although a solution was implemented in July 2019, Metro still lacked a reliable method to ensure all relevant transactions were being monitored until December 2020—over four and a half years after the system’s initial rollout.

Therese Chambers, the FCA’s joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, stated, “Metro’s failings created a potential gap in our defences against criminal misuse of the financial system. These failings persisted for too long.”

Since identifying these issues with its transaction monitoring system in April 2019, Metro Bank has introduced processes to address and remediate the identified problems.