FinCEN’s $125MM UBS AML Order: A Culture and Resourcing Failure

The award-winning Compliance into the Weeds is the only weekly podcast that takes a deep dive into a compliance-related topic, literally going into the weeds to explore a subject more fully. Looking for some hard-hitting insights on compliance? Look no further than Compliance into the Weeds! In this episode of Compliance into the Weeds, Tom Fox and Matt Kelly discuss a newly issued FinCEN consent order sanctioning UBS Financial Services, the U.S. broker-dealer subsidiary of UBS. It is a $125 million penalty, the largest FinCEN fine against a broker-dealer, for extensive anti-money laundering failures. They highlight weak transaction monitoring and suspicious activity reporting (SAR) processes, poor customer due diligence, inadequate wire-transfer data collection, and data governance gaps that led to under-reporting and hindered FinCEN’s ability to build a complete money-laundering picture. The order notes UBS failed to monitor more than 50,000 foreign-currency wires totaling over $10 billion and did not disclose ongoing deficiencies discovered after a 2018 $14 million FinCEN action requiring fixes by 2021, with problems traceable back to 2004 and not addressed until 2023. They frame the matter as a tone-at-the-top and resourcing failure, compare it to other enforcement actions (including a recent SEC fine against Merrill Lynch), and suggest a future deeper dive after reviewing the full order. Key highlights: What UBS Got Wrong Scale Of The Failures Board Oversight and Resourcing Data Governance Breakdown SARs, Metrics, and AI Talk Takeaways and Next Steps Resources: ⁠USB Consent Order⁠ Tom ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠Facebook⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠Twitter⁠ ⁠LinkedIn⁠ A multi-award-winning podcast, Compliance into the Weeds was most recently honored as one of the Top 25 Regulatory Compliance Podcasts, a ⁠Top 10 Business Law Podcast⁠, and ⁠a Top 12 Risk Management Podcast⁠. Compliance into the Weeds has been conferred a Davey, Communicator, and W3 Award, all for podcast excellence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices