The FCA has fined Nationwide Building Society £44m for having "inadequate" anti-financial crime systems and controls.

The regulator said that between October 2016 to July 2021 Nationwide had "ineffective" systems for keeping up-to-date due diligence and risk assessments for its personal current account customers and for monitoring their transactions. 

Nationwide was aware that some of those customers were using their personal accounts for business activity, in breach of its terms, the FCA said.

Nationwide did not offer business current accounts at this point and did not have the right processes in place to manage the financial crime risks from business activity, the watchdog found.   

Because of inadequate controls, Nationwide was unable to "effectively identify, assess, monitor or manage the money laundering risks" among its personal current account customers.

The failings also meant that Nationwide did not have an accurate picture of its customers who presented a higher risk of financial crime.

In one serious case, Nationwide missed opportunities to identify a customer using personal current accounts to receive fraudulent Covid furlough payments. The customer received 24 payments totalling £27.3m over 13 months, with £26.01m of this deposited over 8 days. HMRC recovered £26.5m, but approximately £800,000 remains unrecovered.

Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: "Nationwide failed to get a proper grip of the financial crime risks lurking within its customer base. It took too long to address its flawed systems and weak controls, meaning red flags were missed with serious consequences.

"Building societies and banks have a key role in the fight against financial crime. Firms must remain vigilant in this fight."

The watchdog said that Nationwide was aware of weaknesses in its systems and controls and undertook work to make improvements. However, it failed to adequately address those weaknesses "in a timely manner."

Nationwide subsequently commenced a large-scale financial crime transformation programme in July 2021, the FCA said.

Nationwide would have been fined £62,969,297 but agreed to resolve matters and qualified for a 30% discount under the FCA's processes. The total fine is £44,078,500.