The FCA states that over a four-year period, between June 2016 and December 2020, Metro failed to have the right systems and controls to adequately monitor over 60m transactions, with a value of over £51bn, for money laundering risks. Metro automated the monitoring of customer transactions for potential financial crime in June 2016. However, its system did not work as intended. An error in how data was fed into the system meant transactions taking place on the same day an account was opened, and any further transactions until the account record was updated, were not monitored. Junior staff did raise concerns about some transaction data not being monitored in 2017 and 2018, but these did not result in the issue being identified and fixed, says the watchdog. Even once a fix had been put in place in July 2019, Metro did not have a mechanism to consistently check that all relevant transactions were being fed into the monitoring system until December 2020, over four and a half years after the system was implemented. Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, comments: ‘Metro’s failings risked a gap being left in our defence against the criminal misuse of our financial system. Those failings went on for too long.’Metro Bank would have been fined £23,821,700, but in agreeing to resolve the issues it qualified for a 30% discount.