FCA fined Santander.

Santander UK has become the latest bank hit with a heavy fine by the country’s financial regulator over anti-money laundering failings.

The Financial Conduct Authority said yesterday that it had fined the UK division of the Spanish bank £107.8mn for failing to manage its systems properly, which affected the way it dealt with 560,000 business customers.

It is the largest fine Santander UK has received from the FCA and one of the regulator’s most significant anti-money laundering penalties. The regulator found that between 2012 and 2017, the bank’s systems could not properly verify customer information about their businesses.

It is the latest sign of the regulator taking banks to task over their failure to stem dirty money flows. The FCA has previously taken action against three other lenders. It fined HSBC £64mn in 2021 and rebuked the bank for «serious weaknesses» in its anti-money laundering controls. In addition, it fined Standard Chartered £102mn in 2019, and a London court fined NatWest £264.7mn for failing to prevent a £365mn alleged money laundering scheme.

The regulator’s largest anti-money laundering fine was handed out to Deutsche Bank in 2017 after $10bn was transferred from Russia to offshore bank accounts. The German lender was fined £163mn.

The FCA pointed to one case at Santander UK involving an account belonging to a customer with a small translation business. The company expected monthly deposits of £5,000, but within six months, it received millions in deposits and quickly moved the money elsewhere.

Although the bank’s anti-money laundering team had identified suspicious activity in March 2014, the request was not acted upon for 18 months. «As a result, the customer continued to receive and transfer millions of pounds through its account,» the FCA said.

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