The second-largest bank in the United States reported third-quarter earnings one day after the U.S. Treasury announced the fine for “egregious and continued” money laundering and sanctions violations. It alleged that Bank of America failed to properly report over $5 billion in suspicious transactions, PYMNTS reported Tuesday (Oct. 13).
Meanwhile, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency assessed its largest-ever civil money penalty, $750 million, on Bank of America, calling its anti-money laundering program deficient and ineffective, per the report.
Bank of America is subject to a December 2024 cease-and-desist order, which required it to repair its deficient anti-money laundering program, but it still failed to prioritize compliance, the report said.
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“Financial crime compliance is serious, and we are responsible for getting it right,” Bank of America said in a statement to PYMNTS Tuesday.
“We have invested billions of dollars in technology and dedicated thousands of employees to combat financial crime, and our team is far along with and committed to completing the work required to address the issues raised by our regulators,” the statement said. “We will continue to support federal and local law enforcement across thousands of investigations and report hundreds of thousands of suspicious activity reports each year.”
Bank of America Chief Financial Officer Alastair Borthwick said Wednesday that the bank had thousands of employees focused on remediation work linked to a consent order first issued in 2024, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. The bank had no plans to make substantial further hires to deal with it.
“We staffed up overtime, and we feel like we’re meeting all the obligations in that consent order at this point,” Borthwick said, per the report.
The regulatory action raises questions about how much the lender needs to spend on remediation to show regulators that it has upgraded its compliance practices, the report said.
Bank of America’s performance missed analysts’ expectations even without the fine, according to the report. Revenues rose 3% to $30 billion, hindered by lower trading revenue and investment banking fees.
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