Metro Bank has been fined £16.67 million by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for serious financial crime failings, the regulator revealed on Tuesday.

The FCA said that between June 2016 and December 2020, Metro failed to implement adequate systems and controls to monitor over £51 billion worth of transactions for potential money laundering.

They explained that the oversight stemmed from a fundamental error in the bank's automated transaction monitoring system, which resulted in a significant number of transactions being excluded from scrutiny.

"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," said the FCA.

The FCA's investigation revealed that junior staff raised concerns about the system's limitations as early as 2017 and 2018. However, these concerns were not addressed effectively, resulting in a prolonged period of inadequate monitoring.

Even after a fix was implemented in July 2019, the FCA says it took another year and a half for Metro to establish a robust mechanism to ensure that all relevant transactions were being monitored.

Therese Chambers, Joint Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight at the FCA, criticised Metro's failings, stating, "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."

Since identifying the issues, it is said that Metro has taken steps to rectify the problems with its transaction monitoring system.