The Financial Conduct Authority has fined Starling Bank £29 million for failings related to its financial sanctions screening.
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Starling also “repeatedly breached a requirement not to open accounts for high-risk customers,” says the FCA.
That requirement was put in place after a 2021 review of financial crime controls at challenger banks identified “serious concerns” with the anti-money laundering and sanctions framework at Starling.
Yet the bank failed to comply, opening over 54,000 accounts for 49,000 high-risk customers over the next two years.
This was because, as the bank discovered last year, its automated screening system had, since 2017, only been screening customers against a fraction of the full list of those subject to financial sanctions.
A subsequent internal review identified systemic issues and Starling has since reported multiple potential breaches of financial sanctions to authorities.
The review found that Starling’s senior management as a whole “lacked the experience and capability to effectively implement” the FCA’s requirement.
Therese Chambers, joint executive director, enforcement and market oversight, FCA, says: “Starling’s financial sanction screening controls were shockingly lax. It left the financial system wide open to criminals and those subject to sanctions.
“It compounded this by failing to properly comply with FCA requirements it had agreed to, which were put in place to lower the risk of Starling facilitating financial crime.”
Starling has already established programmes to remediate the breaches and enhance its financial crime control framework, earning a 30% discount on what would have been a £41 million fine.
The bank says it “regrets and apologises” for the failings.