Regulators Fine Amex $350 Million Over AML Failures

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency fined American Express National Bank $350 million and ordered it to address deficiencies in its anti-money-laundering controls, while the Federal Reserve issued a separate enforcement action against American Express and related entities. Regulators said the bank’s risk assessment did not adequately account for its credit and charge card business and that systemic failures in monitoring and reporting allowed about $13 billion in suspected trade-based money laundering activity over a decade to go insufficiently identified or reported. The Fed described deficiencies in the company’s anti-money-laundering program as enterprise-wide, particularly at its bank subsidiary.