(qlmbusinessnews.com . Sat 13th Dec, 2025) London, UK —
FCA Penalizes Nationwide £44M for Lax Money Laundering Oversight from 2016-2021
Nationwide Building Society has incurred a £44 million penalty from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for failing to establish effective anti-financial crime measures from 2016 to 2021.
According to the FCA, Nationwide exhibited “ineffective systems” in evaluating risk and supervising customer transactions. An exemplary lapse in their oversight occurred when they overlooked suspicious activities involving the funneling of £26 million of deceitful Covid furlough payments into a single personal account within a span of eight days.
Nationwide has acknowledged its cooperation with the FCA's inquiry and affirmed its commitment to enhancing its financial crime prevention systems since 2021, aiming for improved robustness.
At the time of concern, Nationwide didn’t offer business accounts, an aspect that may have contributed to oversight gaps. The FCA highlighted that despite knowledge of personal accounts being employed for business transactions, Nationwide lacked a clear understanding of customers posing a higher financial crime risk. This led to inefficient monitoring for money laundering activities.
A striking case involved a customer who deposited £27.3 million of illegitimate furlough funds over 13 months into their account, of which most but not all were subsequently reclaimed by the tax authorities.
The FCA criticized Nationwide for its delayed response in scrutinizing suspicious activities, mentioning that the reception of Job Retention Scheme (JRS) funds should have been a clear indicator of an account being used for business.
Over 5,000 personal accounts at Nationwide were found to have received a total of £64 million in JRS funds, pointing towards systemic issues in detecting potential misuse.
Therese Chambers, the FCA’s joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, condemned Nationwide for not adequately managing the financial crime risks within its customer base, attributing the failure to ineffective systems and insufficient controls.
Though Nationwide has conceded to identifying these issues through internal reviews and reported them to the FCA, it has expressed regret for not meeting the expected standards during the specified period.
“We are sorry that our controls during the period fell below the high standards we expect,” stated a Nationwide spokesperson, emphasizing subsequent substantial investments in economic crime prevention.
The spokesperson reassured that these control deficiencies did not result in financial losses for Nationwide customers and affirmed the building society’s dedication to combating economic crime and safeguarding both its customers and the broader UK financial system from fraudulent activities.
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