Wyelands Bank has been censured by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) for “significant” regulatory failings between December 2016 and May 2020.
The financial services regulatory body, which is an arm of the Bank of England, said Wyeland committed a wide range of failings which included breaches relating to large exposure limits, capital reporting and poor retention of WhatsApp messages, among others.
“Wyelands’ wide-ranging and serious failings resulted in the PRA taking swift supervisory action to minimise the risk to depositors and issuing today’s strong censure,” said Sam Woods, CEO of the PRA and deputy governor for prudential regulation.
This is the first time the PRA has acted against a firm for breaches of large exposure limits, according to a statement.
Such breaches justify a fine of £8.5mln but given Wyelands is in wind down and has limited financial resources, a punishment has not been issued.
The PRA added that fining Wyelands “would not advance its general objective to promote the safety and soundness of firms.”
Wyelands became a member of the Gupta Family Group Alliance (GFG) in December 2016.
In September 2019, the PRA required Wyelands to limit its exposures to GFG and connected parties due to concerns that the bank had an unacceptable concentration of risk.
By March 2020, Wyelands had stopped entering new credit transactions and commenced a wind-down of its business and a year later the PRA required Wyelands to repay its depositors, which has been successfully completed.