In December 2025, Nationwide Building Society was fined £44,078,500 by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for failings in its financial crime systems and controls.
The FCA found serious weaknesses in Nationwide’s AML controls during the period 1 October 2016 to 1 July 2021, including gaps in customer due diligence, customer risk assessment, and transaction monitoring. The firm also knew some personal current accounts were being used for business purposes, yet did not have an adequate framework to manage the risks that followed. One serious case involved a customer who received £27.36m in fraudulent Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme payments, including £26.01m deposited over 8 days. £820,687 remains unrecovered.
This report breaks down the FCA’s findings, the specific gaps that led to severe enforcement action, and the key lessons for financial institutions.
Learn:
- Why Nationwide’s ongoing CDD and customer risk assessment controls failed to keep customer risk current
- How business activity flowing through personal current accounts created a material blind spot
- Where transaction monitoring design and timeliness failed to support early intervention
- How fragmented controls can cause obvious signals to be missed
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