Nationwide fined £44m by watchdog for financial crime control failings

Nationwide Building Society has been fined £44 million by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for weak financial crime controls between October 2016 and July 2021. The FCA found that Nationwide was aware customers were using personal accounts for business purposes, but lacked adequate monitoring processes, leading to a failure to identify and prevent financial crime risks. This resulted in a case where a customer received £27.3 million in fraudulent Covid furlough payments through personal accounts, of which approximately £800,000 remains unrecovered from taxpayers. The FCA stated that Nationwide failed to address its flawed systems in a timely manner, prompting a large-scale financial crime transformation program in July 2021. Nationwide has since invested in improving its economic crime control framework.

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