A banking group has been fined more than £100m after failing to protect its customers from criminals. Santander UK has been fined £107.8 million over “serious and persistent gaps” in its anti-money laundering controls, the financial watchdog has announced.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said business banking customers were affected by anti-money laundering failures. It said the bank “failed to properly oversee and manage” these systems, which impacted its oversight of more than 560,000 business customers.
Santander had “ineffective” systems to adequately verify the information provided by customers about the business they were doing, the FCA said. The failures led to more than £298 million passing through the bank before it closed accounts.
