The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Metro Bank £16,675,200 over failures to monitor potential financial crime.

The regulator found that between June 2016 and December 2020, Metro Bank failed to have the right systems and controls to adequately monitor over 60 million transactions, with a value of over £51bn, for money laundering risks.

Metro automated the monitoring of customer transactions for potential financial crime in June 2016, but its system did not work as intended. An error in how data was fed into the system meant transactions taking place on the same day an account was opened, and any further transactions until the account record was updated, were not monitored.

CONCERNS NOT DEALT WITH

The FCA revealed that junior staff did raise concerns about some transaction data not being monitored in 2017 and 2018, but these did not result in the issue being identified and fixed. Even once a fix had been put in place in July 2019, Metro did not have a mechanism to consistently check that all relevant transactions were being fed into the monitoring system until December 2020, over four and a half years after the system was implemented.

“Metro’s failings risked a gap being left in our defence against the criminal misuse of our financial system”

Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said: “Metro’s failings risked a gap being left in our defence against the criminal misuse of our financial system. Those failings went on for too long.”

Since the firm’s identification of the issues with its transaction monitoring system in April 2019, Metro Bank has put in place processes to remediate the issues identified.

The FCA says it continues to supervise firms to ensure that they have the right systems and controls to manage financial crime risks.