City watchdog slaps Al Rayan Bank with £4m fine for ‘egregious’ anti-money laundering failures January 11, 2023 The Financial Conduct Authority issued a £4m fine to Al Rayan Bank on Wednesday for “egregious” failures in its anti-money laundering rules. The FCA said that between April 2015 and November 2017, Al Rayan allowed money to pass through the bank and be used within the UK “without carrying out appropriate checks.” Al Rayan is [...]
How recession in the US is expected to affect bank earnings this week January 11, 2023 US earnings season kicks off later this week with a string of results from some of the country’s largest banks. JP Morgan, Citi Group, Wells Fargo and Bank of America will all release results on Friday in an interesting environment – to say the least. While higher interest rates have led to record levels of [...]
Standard Chartered mulls sale of £3bn aviation arm days after First Abu Dhabi Bank drops takeover bid January 11, 2023 Standard Chartered is considering selling its £3bn aviation finance business, the bank said today. Standard Chartered’s aviation business, which is based in Ireland, accounts for around two per cent of its total income. The business owns and manages over 120 aircraft, leasing them to over 30 of airlines around the world, according to Airfinance Journal’s [...]
Exclusive: Surge in fraud and scams sends shivers through the City’s financial services space January 11, 2023 Close to half of Londoners believe the financial services industry is more vulnerable to fraud and scams than ever before. And for good reason. In fact, with fraud costing the UK £9.3bn a year, identity theft leaping 11 per cent to an all-time high in 2021 and, for the year ending September 2021, overall fraud was [...]
Cash-strapped Credit Suisse considers halving its bonus pool following £1.7bn loss January 11, 2023 Credit Suisse is considering cutting its bonus pool by 50 per cent as the embattled investment bank seeks to cut costs, Bloomberg has reported. The Swiss asset manager faced a challenging 2022 when its share price sunk 67 per cent. In the nine months to September 2022, Credit Suisse swung to a pretax loss of [...]
UK Treasury under fire for delays to buy-now pay-later regulations January 11, 2023 The Treasury has come under fire from a Tory peer today after more delays to the rollout of buy-now pay-later regulation, amid concerns fintechs have been left in limbo and shoppers are landing themselves in unmanageable piles of debt. Buy-now pay-later (BNPL) firms like Klarna, Clearpay and Laybuy, which allow shoppers to defer and split [...]
City banks’ risk management systems criticised by Bank of England January 10, 2023 The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) today criticised City banks’ approach to risk management despite “regular messaging” on the issue. In a letter sent to bank executives in the City, the Bank of England’s regulatory arm set out its priorities for the New Year. Top of the list for regulators was financial resilience, in particular “deficiencies [...]
Andrew Bailey and Jerome Powell play down central banks’ climate change role January 10, 2023 Andrew Bailey and Jerome Powell, two of globe’s top rate setters, have today said central banks should only have a limited role in tackling climate change. The chiefs of the Bank of England and US Federal Reserve, speaking at a summit hosted by the Swedish central bank, the first in the world, played down their [...]
Clawback: How Barclays is chasing down Covid-19 business loan cash January 10, 2023 Barclays has teamed up with a specialist insolvency practitioner to recover money loaned to small businesses through the UK’s Covid support schemes. The British bank has joined forces with insolvency firm Manolete Partners to recover emergency loans paid through the UK government backed Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS), the Financial Times first reported. The UK’s [...]
FCA fines Guaranty Trust Bank £7.6m for ‘serious weaknesses’ in its anti-money laundering systems January 10, 2023 Guaranty Trust Bank (UK) has been fined £7,671,800 by the City’s financial markets regulator today over “serious weaknesses” in its systems and controls designed to prevent money laundering. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that the weaknesses “were repeatedly highlighted to GT Bank by internal and external sources, including the FCA,” but despite this, the [...]