Fri, 12 Dec 2025

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 Nationwide fined £44m for 'ineffective' crime controls

The building society failed to monitor its customers' activity effectively between 2016 and 2021, the regulator says.
- Nationwide missed opportunities to detect unusual activity after £26m of fraudulent Covid furlough payments were made into one personal account in just 8 days. - The building society did not have an accurate picture of who presented a higher risk of financial crime, allowing money laundering risks to go unmonitored. - A customer banked illegitimate furlough payments worth £27.3m over 13 months, most of which has been recovered by the tax authority. - Nationwide failed to get a proper grip on financial crime risks within its customer base and took too long to address flawed systems and weak controls. - The building society had not offered business accounts during this period but was aware that some customers were using personal accounts for business activity.
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