The Central Bank of Ireland has reprimanded and fined Danske Bank A/S, trading in Ireland as Danske Bank, €1,820,000 pursuant to its Administrative Sanctions Procedure for three breaches of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering & Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, as amended (the CJA).

The three CJA breaches stem from the failure by Danske Bank A/S (Danske) to ensure that its automated transaction monitoring system monitored the transactions of certain categories of customers of its Irish branch1, for a period of almost nine years, between 2010 and 2019.

The root cause of this failure was historic data filters that were applied within Danske’s automated transaction monitoring system, first implemented in 2005 and rolled out to the Irish branch in 2006. Danske failed to consider the appropriateness of these historic data filters within the system or make any adjustments to the system to take account of the specific requirements of the CJA when it came into force in Ireland in 2010.

This led to the erroneous exclusion of certain categories of customers from transaction monitoring, including some customers rated by Danske as high and medium risk, which caused the three breaches of the CJA in this case.

In May 2015, Danske became aware, as a result of an internal audit report, of the inadequacies in its transaction monitoring system and the nature of the risks they posed, yet it failed to notify the Irish branch of these issues and to take adequate action for almost four years. It is estimated that between 31 August 2015 and 31 March 2019, 348,321 transactions, equating to approximately one in forty or 2.43% of all transactions processed through the Irish branch were not monitored for money laundering and terrorist financing risk.

The Central Bank has determined the appropriate fine to be €2,600,000, which has been reduced by 30%2 to €1,820,000 in accordance with the early settlement discount scheme provided for in the Central Bank’s Administrative Sanctions Procedure (ASP).

This is the first penalty that the Central Bank has imposed on a financial institution which is incorporated and supervised outside of Ireland (i.e. in Denmark) but which operates in Ireland as a branch on a passport basis. The Central Bank has responsibility for Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) supervision of Danske’s branch operations in Ireland.

The Central Bank recognises that while firms may rely on automated solutions for transaction monitoring, they must ensure that systems employed for this purpose are appropriately monitored, and calibrated correctly to take account of the actual money laundering or terrorist financing risk to which the firm is exposed. In this case, the transaction monitoring system used by the Irish branch was a Danske group wide automated system that had applied historic data filters which operated to erroneously exclude certain categories of customers from being monitored for a period of almost nine years. This led to the serious breaches in this case.

This case highlights the requirement for firms, including those operating in Ireland on a branch basis, to ensure that group systems, controls, policies and procedures are compatible with Irish legal requirements and to ensure that their governance framework and risk management measures operate effectively. These should be risk-based and proportionate, informed by firms’ business risk assessment of their money laundering and terrorist financing risk exposure.