Metro Bank Holdings PLC (LSE:MTRO) has been fined almost £17 million by Britain’s financial watchdog over anti-money laundering control failures.
Systems were not in place to adequately monitor transactions with a combined value of £51 billion between 2016 and 2020, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on Tuesday.
“Metro's failings risked a gap being left in our defence against the criminal misuse of our financial system,” FCA joint enforcement executive director Therese Chambers said.
An error in its system meant transactions made on the same day an account was opened were not monitored, with concerns said to have been raised among junior staff as early as 2017.
“Those failings went on for too long,” Chambers added, with Metro having moved to fix the system in mid-2019 but only being able to consistently check transactions by late 2020.
Metro was fined £16.7 million as a result, with this having been reduced from £23.8 million as the bank agreed to resolve the issue.