A Small Bank’s Big Lessons About Risk

risk

Banking regulators have given us more lessons to ponder about effective third-party risk management and compliance programs, courtesy of a $30 million sanction against a bank in New York that had neither and ended up stuck in a pandemic-era $300 million fraud scheme. The bank in question is Metropolitan Commercial Bank (MCB), a bank in…

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Deutsche Bank Fined for Slow Compliance Fixes

Deutsche Bank

The Federal Reserve has slapped Deutsche Bank with a $186 million penalty for failing to fix problems in its anti-money laundering compliance program that were originally flagged in the mid-2010s and related to Deutsche Bank’s sketchy relationship with Danske Bank, a former haven for Russian oligarchs. The Fed announced the enforcement action on Wednesday. In…

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Bank of America Nailed on Bogus Accounts

accounts

Astonishing: Bank of America has agreed to pay more than $150 million to settle civil charges that its employees engaged in various unethical practices with customers in the 2010s, including allegations that Bank of America had its own unauthorized customer account scandal — one that continued for years after Wells Fargo was nailed for the…

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More Help on Third-Party Risk

third-party

Banks have fresh guidance this week on how to tackle third-party risk management, and the material offers plenty of good advice on the subject for businesses in any sector.  The guidance comes from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the Federal Reserve, which have been working for…

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The Web of Risks Wrapped Around SVB

SVB

Chief risk officers and board risk committees have one more lesson to learn from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The lesson is buried in the notion that SVB collapsed after “a good old-fashioned bank run.” That’s not quite what happened, and what did happen says a lot about flawed risk management. By now you’ve…

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Silicon Valley Bank: The Oversight Debacle

SVB

Today I want to return to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Everyone has been wondering how the bank met its sudden demise, and whose poor oversight allowed that to happen. Now we have more details to help answer those questions — and, ideally, avoid a repeat performance elsewhere.  People first trained their fire on…

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Early GRC Lessons From SVB

SVB

Life comes at you fast, a point that many tech companies and banks are contemplating today thanks to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Unfortunately this sorry debacle also raises many issues for the larger community of risk managers, regulatory compliance officers, and auditors, so let’s take a look. As I write these words on…

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Danske Bank Pays $2.4B on AML Failures

Danske

Danske Bank, the Danish bank now infamous for allowing one of the largest money laundering schemes in history during the 2000s and 2010s, pleaded guilty to fraud charges in U.S. federal court today and agreed to pay more than $2 billion in criminal penalties and other monetary fines. Danske will pay $2.06 billion in criminal…

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Judge Blasts Ex-Wells Fargo Execs

wells fargo

An administrative law judge has affirmed that three former audit and risk management executives at Wells Fargo should face millions in penalties for their sloppy oversight during the bank’s fake-account scandal in the 2010s. The judge, assigned to the Office of Financial Institution Adjudication, issued his ruling on Wednesday after lengthy proceedings to investigate the…

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‘Climate Risk Compliance’ Coming for Banks

climate

It’s a double shot of news today for regulatory compliance officers in the banking world: two major regulators promising a more rigorous review of climate risks within the coming year.  Michael Hsu, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Michael Barr, vice chair for supervision at the Federal Reserve, both gave…

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