Monzo penalized $28 million by UK regulator for shortcomings in addressing financial crime.

The UK financial regulator has imposed a fine of 21 million pounds ($28.57 million) on digital bank Monzo due to deficiencies in its anti-financial crime protocols, including allowing customers to register using London landmarks as their addresses.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) stated on Tuesday that as Monzo experienced fast growth, it was unable to uphold sufficient controls to mitigate the risk of financial crime. The regulator imposed a penalty of 21.1 million pounds for “insufficient anti-financial crime systems and controls” from October 2018 to August 2020.

Monzo said the problems “have been resolved and are firmly in the past” and that it acted quickly to implement a programme to address financial crime issues in February 2021.

Launched in 2015, Monzo is one of a handful of financial services apps, or “fintechs”, to have emerged in Britain in the last decade, offering financial services via an app.

After a 2020 review, the FCA imposed a requirement on Monzo to prevent it from opening new accounts for high-risk customers. But “between August 2020 and June 2022, it repeatedly failed to comply with the terms of the requirement, including signing up over 34,000 high-risk customers,” the FCA said.

“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,” Therese Chambers, FCA joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said.