Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,
American Express has been ordered to pay a $350 million penalty over what federal regulators described as "critical deficiencies" in its anti-money laundering controls.
The American Express credit card is accepted at the front of a business in Chicago, Il., on February 11, 2025 Scott Olson/Getty ImagesThe regulators said it missed about $13 billion in suspected activity over more than a decade.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced the civil penalty and a cease-and-desist order on Thursday against American Express National Bank, the Utah-based banking subsidiary of the credit-card company.
The Federal Reserve separately issued a concurrent enforcement action against parent company American Express and its subsidiaries, citing significant deficiencies in the company's enterprise-wide anti-money-laundering compliance program.
According to the OCC, American Express National Bank failed to tailor its federally mandated anti-money laundering risk assessment to the way it actually did business.
The regulator said the bank focused too much on its "relatively narrow" demand deposit account products and services while not giving enough attention to the risks associated with its "more dominant" credit and charge card products.
The bank also experienced what the OCC described as "systemic breakdowns" in its processes for monitori
