The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has so far charged firms £391 million in 2019, up from £60 million during 2018.

This year's figure is the highest since 2015, when the regulator fined firms £905 million. More than nine of the FCA’s 17 fines in 2019 were worth more than £10 million, while only two rose above that level in 2018.

The largest fine issued was to Standard Chartered, which was forced to pay out £102 million, a portion of the more than $1.1 billion the bank was penalised across multiple jurisdictions for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) breaches in two higher risk areas of its business.

In March, UBS was fined £27.6 million for failings relating to the misreporting of 135.8 million transactions between November 2007 and May 2017, while in May, Raphaels Bank was penalised £1.89 million for failing to manage its outsourcing arrangements properly between April 2014 and December 2016.

As FStech reported earlier this year, this spate of regulatory action on banks found to be in breach of transaction reporting and AML rules has highlighted the need for more automated RegTech solutions.

Elsewhere, mis-selling was the other big trend this year, with Standard Life fined £30.8 million for pension mis-selling, Carphone Warehouse fine £29.1 million for mis-selling insurance and Prudential fined £23.8 million for mis-selling retirement products.

According to the FCA’s enforcement statistics, it has almost 700 investigations open. The caseload has meant that the average completion time of ongoing investigations is rising, and during the 2018/19 financial year it is taking an average of 29 months to settle cases.

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