Norwegian Regulator Slaps Santander With $1M Fine For AML Issue

The Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) in Norway has fined Santander, a Spanish bank, $1 million for violating Norwegian anti-money laundering (AML) statutes, according to a report by Reuters.

The violations were found at the Santander Consumer Bank in Norway and involved a failure in an electronic monitoring system meant to check for money laundering. About 1.6 million transactions involving 300,000 customers were not checked between Oct. 30, 2014, and Dec. 6, 2018.

The FSA wrote a letter about the fine on June 28 and published it on Tuesday (July 2).

Santander went back and checked all of the transactions after the issue was brought to light by the FSA. The bank found no violations worth reporting to the police, the letter said. The bank said it had taken note of the FSA’s ruling and would decide on how to proceed in the future.

“Santander Consumer Bank has fully cooperated with and kept the FSA fully continuously informed,” a Santander spokeswoman said, according to the report. “The IT error was connected to the integration of old and new IT systems. Santander Consumer Bank has made several improvements to our IT systems and routines.”

In other Santander news, the bank has been working to incorporate 5G technology into its business, something many financial institutions are looking to do.

According to a press release published on June 14, the bank “kicked off an experiment with Telefonica to explore potential use cases for superfast 5G networks in banking.”

More specifically, the 5G effort, taking place at two Santander branches near Madrid, “will showcase the potential of 5G in branch-to-branch video conferencing, low latency cloud storage and virtual reality. While customers will be able to experience the 5G banking experience firsthand … Santander has agreed to work with Telefonica on more wide-ranging projects, such as the introduction of fully equipped mobile offices at big events or for emergencies.”