Starling Bank—FCA fined Starling Bank £29M for 'shockingly lax' financial crime controls
The Financial Conduct Authority fined Starling Bank £28,959,426 for systemic failures in anti-money laundering and sanctions screening controls. Since 2017, Starling's automated screening system had only checked customers against a fraction of the UK sanctions list. Despite agreeing to FCA restrictions, Starling opened over 54,000 accounts for 49,000 high-risk customers between September 2021 and November 2023. The FCA said controls 'did not keep pace' with growth from 43,000 to 3.6 million customers.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate Governance | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.147 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.59)× agency (compelled ×0.25)
Evidence (1 signal)
FCA fined Starling Bank £29M for 'shockingly lax' financial crime controls
The Financial Conduct Authority fined Starling Bank £28,959,426 for systemic failures in anti-money laundering and sanctions screening controls. Since 2017, Starling's automated screening system had only checked customers against a fraction of the UK sanctions list. Despite agreeing to FCA restrictions, Starling opened over 54,000 accounts for 49,000 high-risk customers between September 2021 and November 2023. The FCA said controls 'did not keep pace' with growth from 43,000 to 3.6 million customers.