The Great Britain Financial behavioral authority Fine fine Monzo Bank Ltd. £ 21 million GBP (29 million US dollars) about failures that are bound with the systems of the digital lender to stop financial crime.
Between 2018 and 2022 – a period in which the Monzo customer base rose to 5.8 million users by about ten times – the watchdog found that Monzo did not receive sufficient information about customers during the onboarding process, said the FCA in A opinion.
For example, the company ultimately found cases in which customers used foreign addresses with British postcodes or “obviously unplausible” addresses such as the famous British sights, according to the agency.
“This shows what a lack of Monzo’s financial crime controls were,” said Therese Chambers, the joint executive director for the enforcement and market administration of the FCA, in the explanation. “This was reinforced by its inability not to comply with the requirement on board high -risk documents.”
Monzo, who now has 13 million customers, said it began to work in 2021 to tackle the problems and made a “significant investment” in recruitment of experts in financial crime for improving his processes.
“The results of the FCA relate to a historical time three years ago and draw a line under problems that were solved and have been solved in the past – with our findings at the time that led to significant improvements in our controls,” said Chief Executive Officer TS Anil in a separate explanation.
This is the 10th fine that the FCA has imposed on a bank for similar failures in financial crimes in the past four years. In October, the supervisory authority announced that it would receive a fine Starling Bank 29 million pounds for what it described as a “shocking lax” controlled risky customers.
