Nationwide fined £44m for financial crime failures

Nationwide has been fined £44m for failing to bash capable to combat fiscal crime.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued the punishment aft criticising the gathering society's "inadequate" efforts astatine tackling offences specified arsenic wealth laundering.

The regulator said this included Nationwide having ineffective policies and procedures for monitoring idiosyncratic existent accounts.

The good relates to failures during the play betwixt October 2016 and July 2021.

The FCA said that successful 1 "serious" case, the gathering nine missed opportunities to spot however a lawsuit was utilizing existent accounts to person millions of pounds successful fraudulent COVID furlough payments during the pandemic.

They were sent 24 payments totalling £27.3m implicit 13 months, including £26m deposited implicit 8 days.

HMRC managed to claw backmost astir of the cash, but astir £800,000 remains unrecovered.

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The FAC said Nationwide had been alert that immoderate customers had been "using their idiosyncratic accounts for concern activity, successful breach of its terms".

It added: "Nationwide did not connection concern existent accounts astatine this point, truthful did not person the close processes successful spot to negociate the fiscal transgression risks from concern activity."

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Therese Chambers, an FCA director, said: "Nationwide failed to get a due grip of the fiscal transgression risks lurking wrong its lawsuit base. It took excessively agelong to code its flawed systems and anemic controls, meaning reddish flags were missed with superior consequences.

"Building societies and banks person a cardinal relation successful the combat against fiscal crime. Firms indispensable stay vigilant successful this fight."

A Nationwide spokesperson told Sky News: "Nationwide identified these issues, which subordinate to controls successful spot earlier July 2021, done its ain reviews, and voluntarily brought them to the attraction of the FCA.

"The nine cooperated afloat with the FCA investigation, and we are atrocious that our controls during the play fell beneath the precocious standards we expect.

"Since 2021, Nationwide has invested importantly successful each aspects of its economical transgression power model successful bid to guarantee our systems are robust."

They added: "We bash not judge that these controls issues caused fiscal nonaccomplishment to immoderate of our customers and stay committed to preventing economical transgression and protecting our customers and the wider UK system from fraud."

The punishment is the latest successful a drawstring of fines handed retired implicit fiscal transgression failures by the FCA successful caller years.

In December 2022, the regulator fined Santander UK £107.8m for "repeated money-laundering failures", portion successful November 2024 Metro Bank was issued with a £16m penalty for akin reasons.