After Metro Bank launched a financial crime system in 2016, some complaints raised concerns about the system, leading to a temporary fix in 2019.
The watchdog has now fully investigated reported failures to fix “serious deficiencies” until 4 years after its installation, leaving space for fraudsters to take advantage of the money laundering protection system.
Metro Bank agreed to take immediate action to reduce their £16.7mn fine by 30%.
The bank’s chief executive has pledged to fully “focus on the future” and profitability, putting their legal woes behind them. However, the Watchdog found that monitoring over customer transactions were not conducted after an account was opened, due to how partial or incorrect data was submitted to the system. As a result, 60 million customer transactions were not monitored to detect potential money laundering.
“Consequently, unusual or uncharacteristic transactional activity was not highlighted to the Metro AML teams who would ordinarily use this information to identify suspicious activity”.
