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Britain’s financial regulator said on Tuesday it had fined digital bank Monzo £21 million ($28.5 million) for financial crime control failings, which included letting customers use false addresses such as Buckingham Palace. The Financial Conduct Authority said the penalty was for Monzo’s ‘inadequate anti-financial crime systems and controls between October 2018 and August 2020’. The bank thereafter ‘repeatedly breached a requirement preventing it from opening accounts for high-risk customers’ through to June 2022, the FCA said in a statement. ‘Monzo’s ability to identify potential customers who had previously engaged in financial crime or fraud was significantly limited,’ it added in its full decision. Monzo’s chief executive TS Anil said in a separate statement that it had since carried out ‘substantial improvements’ to its financial crime controls. He added that the issues were ‘firmly in the past.’ Therese Chambers, FCA joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, noted that ‘Monzo onboarded customers on the basis of limited, and in some cases, obviously implausible information such as customers using well-known London landmarks as an address’. ‘This was compounded by its inability to properly comply with the requirement not to onboard high-risk customers,’ she added. The addresses used included 10 Downing Street, the official residence of Britain’s prime minister. Monzo has more than 12 million customers, up from around 600,000 in 2018. In January, the Financial Times reported that Monzo was aiming to be ‘IPO ready’ by the end of 2025, with executives split over whether to pursue the initial public offering in New York or London. CEO TS Anil was favouring the US while the board had expressed a preference for the UK, the FT reported. source: AFP Copyright 2025 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
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