Norway’s Financial Supervisory Authority has penalised Santander for violating the country’s anti-money laundering laws.
According to Reuters, the Norwegian regulator fined the lender NOK9m ($1.05m) for violations identified at Santander Consumer Bank.
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In a letter published on its website, the Financial Supervisory Authority said that a failure in the bank’s electronic monitoring system failed to check around 1.6 million transactions for money laundering.
The failure affected around 300,000 customers between 30 October 2014 and 6 December last year.
Following the identification of breaches, Santander back-checked all these transactions which were overlooked during the failure. However, it found no violations worth reporting to the agencies.
In an emailed statement to the Reuters, a spokeswoman of the Spanish lender admitted the failure and the fine imposed by FSA.
She was quoted as saying: “Santander Consumer Bank has fully cooperated with and kept the FSA fully continuously informed.
“The IT error was connected to the integration of old and new IT systems. Santander Consumer Bank has made several improvements to our IT systems and routines.”
In April this year, Santander added new features to its mobile app to increase security and prevent fraud. The new features include the introduction of fingerprints or facial recognition to authenticate a transaction.
The lender recently also announced plans to invest more than €20bn in technological upgrades over the next four years.
