Santander’s £100m fine for failures over checks

Santander has been fined more than £100m for repeated anti-money laundering failures. 

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that between 2012 and 2017, the High Street lender failed to maintain its systems designed to spot criminals. 

The lax checks in Santander’s business bank covered its oversight of over 560,000 customers, the City watchdog added. 

Lax checks: The Financial Conduct Authority said that between 2012 and 2017, the High Street lender failed to maintain its systems designed to spot criminals

It failed to verify the information customers gave about what business they were doing, and did not check the money going through their accounts against what the customers had said should be going through. 

One customer opened an account claiming it was a small translation business with expected monthly deposits of £5,000. Yet within six months, it was receiving millions and was transferring the cash to separate accounts. Santander’s anti-money laundering team recommended the account be shut down in March 2014. 

But failures at the bank meant this didn’t actually happen until over a year later, in September 2015 – by which time the customer had received millions of pounds. 

When law enforcement requested the account be kept open temporarily in September 2015, Santander lost track of the request. The account remained open until the FCA wrote to Santander in December 2016. 

All in all, Santander’s failures led to £298m of suspicious money flowing through the bank before it closed dodgy accounts. It was fined £107.7m by the FCA. It decided not to challenge the findings.